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SPIRIT LIFE 



OR, DO WE DIE ? 



BY 
WILLIAM DUNSEATH EATON 

'I 

Founder and first Editor of The Chicago Herald. Author of 
"The True Flame," "The White Crows," "Iskander," "The 
Parson o' Dumford," "Joshua Whitcomb," "All the Kage," 
A History of the World War, and other books and plays. 



CHICAGO 

SWToN^VanVLIET®. 

PUBLISHERS 



*&v 






Copyright 1920 by 

STANTON & VAN VLIET CO. 

Entered Stationers Hall, 
London, England 



NOV 1 1 1920 
©CLA605127 



-~vv 4 



TO 

HERBERT VANDERHOOF 

Editor op Canada Monthly Magazine 

Excellent Journalist and Faithful Friend 



"Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 

Who hopeless lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 

Across the mournful marble play; 

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to fleshly sense unknown, 

That life is ever lord of death 

And love can never lose its own/' 

— WHxixm. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Reading the Future 

A Prophecy of Pioneering 12 

I Discover the Linotype 14 

Affection that Bridged the Grave 19 

The Chicago Herald 30 

A Foregleam of Drama 36 

The Spirit of the North 42 

A Pragmatical Ghost . . 47 

"From the Vasty Deep" 48 

"The Everlasting Now" . . 50 

The Unseen Realities 54 

Sir Oliver Lodge on Etheral Bodies 
The Vision of Count Tolstoi 70 

Apparitions 

The Ghost of Philip's Mother 76 

At the Moment of Death ........ 80 

Philip's Daughter 82 

The Man Who Had No Use for Ghosts 82 

A Ghost that Protested 84 

The Ghost of Mrs. Conwell 86 

The Spectre Monk 90 

The Indignant Ghost 92 

A Ghost of Tragic Memory 94 

The Banshee of the O'Neills 97 

Lady Fanshawe Sees a Banshee 97 

The Beresford Ghost 98 

"The Veil of Disembodied Spirits" 107 

A Natural Body and a Spiritual Body 112 

The Persistence of Spirits . . 114 

The Famous Wynyard Ghost 118 

The Ghost that Killed Marshal Bliicher . . . . .125 

The Ghosts of Holy Writ 132 

Lying Spirits 134 

The Substance of Apparitions 136 

Denman Thompson and the Live-Man Ghost . . . 139 

Dark Ways of the Cabinet Spook 142 

"Visions of the Night" '. . 145 



Contents 

Page 

Why Ghosts Prefer the Dark 145 

The Trouble with the Whole Thing 146 

The Great Rhapsody 146 

Weighing a Soul 

Where Does the Lost Substance Go? 157 

Visible Doubles of Living Persons 161 

What Happens When You Die . . . . . . .166 

Persistent Personal Character 167 

Second-Hand Ghosts 169 

No Summons Runs in Shadowland 170 

Between Two Worlds 

One Who Died and Came Back . . 173 

Ouija 

Manifestations 

Telepathy 

Mind Reading by Agreement 203 

The Capture of New York 204 

The Sad Case of Bishop 205 

Muscle Readers 206 

Do Your Own Mind Reading ....... 207 

What Is Telepathy? " ... . .208 

Telepathy and Hypnosis 214 

Materialization Seances 
A Materialized Body 220 

Conan Doyle and the Katy King Case 
Conan Doyle's Letter of Explanation 226 

Higher Attributes of Lower Animals 

The Dog that Could Live No Longer 234 

The Cat that Persuaded Itself 236 

Hypnotism 

The Doings of William Kennedy 242 

The Orthodox Party and the "Baby" 243 

The Expert from the Audience 243 

Kennedy and the Great Prince 245 

The Hypnotic Process 246 

The Little Golden Snakes . . . . . . . . 262 

The Sum of the Matter 



PREFACE 

Birth and death are incidents in life. The 
human body is assembled at one and dissolved 
at the other, but its temporary and more or 
less intelligent inhabitant goes uninterrupted 
on his educative way. 

This book is not concerned with the state 
preceding birth, but only with that which fol- 
lows bodily death, and with evidences of that 
state offered by people who have entered it. 

The scope allowed is wide enough to include 
intelligence as a superphysical quantity in 
what we call the lower orders of life, and the 
presence of influences that are neither physical 
nor spiritual in the ordinary sense of those 
terms, but properties of a domain that lies be- 
tween the two. 

There is at this time a real spiritual awaken- 
ing very like that of the first Christian century. 
Early Christianity was affirmed by phenomena 
precisely similar to those of the present, and 
like them, arising from uncarnate springs of 
action. Religious beliefs that originated in 
the middle ages have been shaken by a war in 
which millions of human lives were snapped out. 
The air was filled with souls violently pro- 
jected from their habitations, the nations were 



full of people suddenly bereft of their dearest. 
Stress of affection from those who had gone 
met stress of longing from those who remained. 
Across this vast bridge of sighs, disregarding 
old inhibitions, incarnate and excarnate 
reached and intermingled. The contact re- 
mains, though its impulse has lost poignancy. 
The margins of life have overlapped until 
almost we have come to realize Rupert Brooke's 
vision of a time when we shall 

"Think each in each, immediately wise; 

Learn all we lacked before; hear, know and say 
What this tumultuous body now denies; 

And feel, who have laid our groping hands away, 
And see, no longer blinded by our eyes." 

That awakening suggested this book, but I 
have refrained from localizing the subject in 
the time-zone of war. I have taken and treated 
it at large, as befits a matter that is and always 
has been concurrent with human living. 

The book offers no argument for spiritual- 
ism as such, but confines itself to narratives of 
fact, with such explanation of things that seem 
extraordinary as may bring them within every- 
day understanding. W. D. Eaton. 

The Press Club, 
Chicago, 1920. 



"READING THE FUTURE" 

MY FIRST look-in on divination came 
when I was eighteen years young, and 
correspondingly cocksure of everything. A 
New York Herald man of my acquaintance 
drifted along one day, uneasily drunk and 
anxious to get over it. His name was George 
Brown, and his manner of life was iridescent. 
His father, a merchant in a nearby country 
town, had to come forward several times and 
pay things up for him, on a rather large scale, 
relatively speaking. George's idea that day 
was to take a long walk in shady streets. He 
thought I was the boy to see that he took it. I 
concurred in this, and we walked. 

In a street noticeably quiet for even that 
quiet city, a sign on a house said a fortune 
teller lived inside. George was piped up to 
just about that kind of thing, and we must go 
in, and did. I had the creeps, I remember, 
and would have liked to escape, but the sybil 
was there and waiting, and I could get through 
with it more gracefully than I could get out. 



10 Spirit Life 

I know now she was a crystal gazer. It was 
all new to me then. 

She was an old woman, sad eyed, and snuf- 
fling as with impending tears. A piece of 
bright glass lay in her lap, and after a mourn- 
ful survey of us, she sighed and looked at it. 
A few moments of silence, and then she began 
on George, and scared him sober with a Cas- 
sandra warning — woe, woe! His own career 
was to be brilliant but short, yet long enough 
to let him kill his father. Not with his hands, 
but by his acts, for he would ruin that good 
old man, and through heartbreak working on 
a frame already enfeebled, bring him to the 
grave, where the mother soon would follow. 
And for his own unhappy part, the cup 
would get him before his powers would have 
time to ripen. George shrank in his chair, 
chalk white, but he said nothing. 

Then she attended to my case, and gave me 
a life reading, sketchy, but clear in the high 
spots, up to my eighty-fourth year — at which 
time I would (as she delicately put it) cease 
to take interest in the affairs of this world. 

In justice to that old girl, I must say she 
had it about right so far as my traipsing has 



Spirit Life 11 

carried me, and fixed me out with a comforta- 
ble ending, surrounded by friends; which 
festive feature I mean, if possible, to elude, for 
I can't understand why anyone should want 
anyone else on the premises when he dies. It 
is better done solus, unless one be fortunate 
enough to die in battle. 

However, being eighteen and infallible, the 
whole thing seemed too trivial to engage the 
serious attention of a first class intellect (my 
own), and I dismissed it. But George's 
father died within two years, empoverished 
and heartbroken even as said, and his mother 
lingered but a little while after. George's 
own life went down in gloom before he had 
reached thirty; and in the latter days of it he 
ate ashes like bread, and mingled his drink with 
weeping. 

For a long time — several years — that epi- 
sode stood alone. Then it fell to me as a news- 
paper man to do a turn of investigating for 
the explosion of a fraud, which was all in the 
day's work, but a few things came up that set 
me investigating on my own account. Some- 
times it would be with friends, sometimes alone, 
but I pursued the subject until I had seen it 
in all its aspects. I have my own opinion of it. 



12 Spirit Life 

I saw a great many practitioners, most of 
them shocking creatures, many of them good 
though unconscious comedy characters; and 
here and there a few who were capable and 
helpful. The best of these last were Mrs. 
Hesse, of New York, Mrs. Simpson, who lived 
in Sheldon street near Union Park, Chicago, 
Mrs. Mary E. Weaver, who lives in West 
Adams street, and Doctor Corliss, of Brooklyn. 

Mrs. Simpson was a slight, nervous woman, 
a Louisiana creole by birth, the mother of a 
family, and held in high esteem by her neigh- 
bors, as I learned by inquiry. My old friend 
Mr. McVicker had heard of her, and asked me 
to go over and find out what she could do. I 
knew no more about her than he told me, and 
that was only her name and address. 

The sitting was interesting, but the main 
part of it seemed to me at the time too remote 
from probability to be worth considering. 
This is that part: 

A PROPHECY OF PIONEERING 

She told me that in about three years I 
would come to a turning point in my career. 
I would find myself standing on the side of a 
mountain, looking over a rolling prairie, white 



Spirit Life 13 

with snow in the morning sunlight ; that before 
sunset that day I would come upon an Indian 
sitting on a boulder beside a stream, on the 
other bank of the stream being a thick outcrop- 
ping of coal; that I would take up or locate 
that coal, and build a town near by; that this 
would occur in "the Couteaux of the Souris," 
and that thereafter my life would lie in chan- 
nels utterly foreign to anything I had known 
before. The phrase "Couteaux of the Souris" 
puzzled me, and stuck in my memory. 

Three years later all this actually did occur 
— Indian, coal, town, and new occupations. 
It was led up to by a series of happenings in 
Washington, growing out of my newspaper 
work there. The forecast made by Mrs. 
Simpson recurred to my mind over near the 
international boundary line, in a region then 
unoccupied, on a day that % began as described. 
I turned a bend in a stream that afternoon, 
and came upon an Indian sitting on a lump 
of rock opposite a cropping of lignite — ter- 
tiary coal. The rest followed. I founded 
there the town of Dunseath, North Dakota, 
about fifty miles south of the site of the pres- 
ent city of Brandon, Manitoba. It was some 



14 Spirit Life 

time before I got the finishing touch in the 
explanation of "the Couteaux of the Souris." 

The stream where the coal cropped emptied 
into a river the frontier people called the 
Mouse. I knew it by no other name. The 
little river where the coal was ran between low- 
cut hills sloping toward the Mouse. On an 
old Hudson's Bay Company map in the near- 
est land office the next summer, I found these 
hills marked "Couteaux of the Souris." Souris 
is French for Mouse. I hadn't thought of 
that. 

The old name has come back. I don't think 
the English equivalent lasted very long, though 
the French has lately been Englished. I was 
up there last summer and I heard the people 
call it "Sooriss." 

I DISCOVER THE LINOTYPE 

While my town was being built, I made a 
visit to Mrs. Simpson for acknowledgment, 
if nothing more. On this occasion I learned 
that still another change lay almost immedi- 
ately before me. 

I am by trade a printer. Though I had not 
followed the craft since my apprenticeship, I 
had been in continuous touch with it through 



Spirit Life 15 

one or another position of editorship. The 
new thing foreshadowed was to be a revolution- 
ary invention in printing, described as a large 
upright frame, about the shape of a window 
casing, with something in it that would take 
the place of typesetting. It was to come to 
me unsought, suddenly, as if dropped from 
above. I was to take it up and interest others, 
and be the means of bringing it into use. 

Within six months, one evening in the Ebbitt 
house at Washington, Maj. W. S. Peabody, 
a retired army man, showed me a metal slug 
having the length, height and thickness of a 
line of type. On one edge of it were type 
faces, regularly spaced in words. Slugs had 
been in use theretofore for galley-marks 
in book and news work, and in job printing 
for dashes and ornamental tailpieces, but this 
type-edge feature with its perfect spacing was 
something new. 

The printing art had been successfully 
mechanized in every department save the most 
essential and most costly — typesetting. A 
good many expert mechanicians had during 
many years been busy trying to create machin- 
ery that would set type and several had suc- 
ceeded in all but one particular, which hap- 



16 Spirit Life 

pened to be the most sharply vital. They 
would set type all right in lines— but they 
could not justify the lines when set. That is, 
so space the words apart that the lines would 
be of exactly even length. Justifying (a fun- 
gescent form of the word "adjusting") had to 
be done by hand. Moreover, nearly all these 
tentative machines would break three or four 
pounds of type in a run of eight or ten hours, 
and type cost from forty-five to eighty-five 
cents a pound. Between hand- justifying and 
type breakage, machine-set type cost more than 
hand-set. The trade was in urgent need of 
some or any new process that would get the 
desired result without the accompanying cost 
of these drawbacks. 

One glance at Maj. Peabody's slug told me 
that whoever made it had found the way out. 
It looked at first like a step back toward the 
Chinese method, in which an engraved block 
was the unit. This slug prefigured if it did 
not realize a method in which the line would 
be the unit of composition, instead of the in- 
dividual letter of Gutenberg's method. More- 
over, it spaced to perfection. I was immedi- 
ately interested — in fact, excited. 

Major Peabody told me he had the specimen 



Spirit Life 17 

from a man who brought it from Baltimore. 
I found the man and from him got the Balti- 
more address. Next morning I went to Bal- 
timore, and there, in a little shop near the 
waterfront, I found the first and rudimentary 
linotype machine. It was not known by that 
name then. I gave it the name, afterward. 
The printers wouldn't look at it. They said 
the inventor was "crazy," and some of them 
did not hesitate to say I was crazy too. 

Never mind details. It appealed to me at 
sight as the first practical thing up to that 
time produced with a view to substituting me- 
chanical composition for hand-set type in 
straight reading matter, and in that I was 
wholly right, as results have shown. I dropped 
everything else and worked fourteen months 
to pull it into the world — and succeeded, 
though for eight months I had to take laughter 
for my pains, and then for six months fight 
for a bargain with the group of people in Wash- 
ington who owned it, and who without some 
such deliverance would probably have owned it 
to this day, a dead one. It was a rocky road 
that had no turning until I finally won the 
interest of Melville E. Stone, now general 
manager of The Associated Press, then editor 



i8 Spirit Life 

of The Chicago Daily News. Mi\ Stone in- 
terested Victor Lawson, his partner. White- 
law Reid soon joined us, and after that there 
was little difficulty. 

It turned out to be just what Mrs. Simpson 
had foretold — revolutionary in the printing 
trade. It came into use all over the world, 
and for years operated as an accelerant to the 
volume of print. It made possible the twenty- 
four page daily paper, the dray-load Sunday 
paper, the cheap output of books; and cleared 
the way for the new photographic rapid 
method of producing plates without type-com- 
position, in which I am fortunate enough to 
have a hand. 

The inventor's name was Otmar Mergen- 
thaler. He completed by a process of reversal 
the discovery of that other inventor, John 
Gutenberg, who four hundred years ago made 
printing commercially possible. The two 
names shall go to future time, together. 
Mergenthaler lived up to about fifteen years 
ago, long enough to enjoy his success and the 
solid reward he had earned so well. 

AFFECTION THAT BRIDGED THE GRAVE 

While I was trying to get printers and pub- 
lishers to listen to me about Mergenthaler's 



Spirit Life 19 

machine, I traveled everywhere between 
Omaha and Montreal, and from the Ohio 
river towns to St. Paul. That was the time 
when I was getting laughed at for my pains. 

I had a friend in Chicago representing a 
group of people in Scotland who had heavy 
interests in Canada and the United States, 
and this friend held to what in these days is 
called Buddhism. Like other men of that 
thought, he knew about spiritism and its phe- 
nomena, and took it for what it was worth, 
knowing full well its meretricious and mistaken 
side. I never have known a saner man, nor a 
more fastidious. He was not above visiting 
practitioners of the better sort, and in New 
York, in London and in Edinburgh, he knew 
of several who could not be approached save 
through responsible introduction. 

Aboard a Pennsylvania train on one of my 
trips to New York it came to me to ask him 
for an address and an introductory telegram, 
and I followed the impulse, wiring from Har- 
risburg. When I reached the Gilsey House 
in New York, his reply was there awaiting me. 
It commended me to a Mrs. Hesse, in West 
Forty-sixth street. I enclosed the telegram 



20 Spirit Life 

with a note to Mrs. Hesse and sent it up by 
messenger. A reply came back appointing 
eight o'clock that evening, and at eight o'clock 
I was there. 

The house was handsome, and in a neighbor- 
hood next in quality to Murray Hill, as Mur- 
ray Hill then was rated, so that I hesitated. 
All the media I had theretofore seen were 
poorly lodged, and this place looked good 
enough to raise a doubt, but I rang and a neat 
maid came to the door and asked me if I had 
the appointment for that hour. Getting the 
right answer she admitted me, just as a man 
and woman in evening dress came into the hall- 
way. The man disappeared in the direction 
of the drawing room. The woman came for- 
ward and said she was Mrs. Hesse. Then 
hesitatingly, 

"I do not sit for more than one at a time." 

I accepted this statement without knowing 
what it meant, and waited. After a moment 
of looking past me, her face cleared, and she 
waved me to a small room at the right, well 
furnished and well lighted. 

Mrs. Hesse nodded me to be seated, and 
herself sat down, turned her eves toward the 
wall a few feet away, and sat motionless fully 



Spirit Life 21 

five minutes. Then she made a little gesture 
of apology, and explained. 

"When you came in there was a young lady 
with you. That was why I told you I would 
sit for only one at a time. She was so clear 
that for the moment I thought she was in the 
body, but she dimmed and then showed again, 
and smiled, and I knew she was in the spirit. 

"She tells me she is your wife. When we 
came into this room I saw a cloudy film upon 
the wall. Then I knew what she wanted. I 
have seen how she 'died,' as they say. 

"The mist on the wall parted, and showed me 
this same young lady sitting in a crowed street 
car that was crossing a bridge over a river full 
of shipping. I could see the masts of ships 
and the tops of steamer-funnels and the smoke 
of tugboats — a city strange to me, evidently a 
very large city — and evidently a hot day. She 
was sitting next a good looking red haired girl. 
The car seemed to pass from the bridge to a 
viaduct, for through the window I saw below 
it several railway tracks with freight cars and 
locomotives moving about. And as I looked 
at her as she sat there she turned pale, and put 
her hand to her throat as if she would open 
her dress. She called a word, 



22 Spirit Life 

"'Will!' 

"Her head fell to the shoulder of the red 
haired girl and her eyes closed. Her heart 
had stopped. 

"The mist came again and covered the wall 
for a few seconds, but she still is here. She 
stands beside you now. She asks me to tell 
you her name is Eliza. Do you understand ?■" 

Indeed I did understand. The ensuing de- 
scription of the appearance was an exact 
description of my wife. 

The death occurred in a Clark street car as 
it crossed the river and the viaduct. It had 
been described to me an hour or two after it 
happened, by the red haired girl (I did not 
and don't know who she was) , and by two men 
who knew me but did not know this was my 
wife. She had died of heart paralysis on her 
way home after an afternoon performance of 
a play she had helped me write. From the 
back of the house I had seen her sitting next 
to the Reverend David Swing, and had pointed 
her out to De Wolf Hopper, who was stand- 
ing beside me. He was well acquainted with 
her. I dare say he remembers. 

Several times between that afternoon in 



Spirit Life 23 

Chicago and this evening in New York I had 
been aware of her presence. Once as I sat 
in the gloaming, by a soft kiss and a caressing 
touch upon my hair. Again by my glasses 
being raised from where they dangled, and 
fixed upon my nose in a quick and playful way 
I knew so well, or the pat of a soft hand upon 
my cheek, a passing touch I dearly remem- 
bered. Another time by a soft call of "Will!" 
as she used to give it when I had been silent too 
long — little reminders ineffably sweet, that 
stirred the utter depths of longing, yet con- 
soled. 

This time I was to get more. I was told 
she had come with me from the hotel to this 
house, so intent upon her errand that she did 
not realize her presence was strong enough to 
bring her into visibility. Mrs. Hesse said the 
phenomenon was new to her, and that the mes- 
sage I was about to receive being essential to 
the well being of our children, she would ask 
me to listen without interrupting. 

The message was to this effect: 

First, I was not to worry about our boy. 
He was only a little fellow, and not very well. 
I had placed him with a perfectly dear family 
named Bond, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to be 



24 Spirit Life 

near his little sister, who was at school in 
Kemper Hall — the youngest child they ever 
had taken into that excellent establishment. 
Mrs. Hesse had some trouble in getting the 
name of the town. 

"It isn't Goshen/' she said. "It's an Indian 
name like Goshen, but it wasn't quite that." 
It was near enough, and I helped her out. 

"Your wife says that is right," she said, with 
relief. "And your little boy is not going to be 
ill. He was out this afternoon, digging in his 
garden patch in Aunty Bond's back yard." 

When I got back to Chicago and went to 
Kenosha to see him, I found these things were 
true. 

I had been a widower about five years. My 
father-in-law and mother-in-law at Rochester 
had passed out a few months before, almost 
together, while I was in Winnipeg negotiating 
a railway contract. I had been informed of 
this, but no word had come to me about my 
father-in-law's estate, and indeed if I had 
thought about it at all it was to assume there 
was none, for he had met rather heavy reverses 
in his later years. But now I was told that in 
his will he had remembered our girl and boy 
and that a brother-in-law was taking over the 



Spirit Life 25 

estate intact with intent to administer in his 
own way. 

Mrs. Hesse said my wife wished me to have 
the estate partitioned and to get one of our 
nephews, a bright young lawyer (she gave his 
name), to look after the children's share, con- 
vert and invest it in their behalf. 

"She wants your promise," said Mrs. Hesse; 
and I gave it. 

I went to Rochester and told our nephew 
about it. Of course he laughed at me, but he 
took the matter up, and to our amazement he 
found the case exactly as described. 

The old gentlemen's affairs were by no 
means as meager as we had thought. The 
estate was not exactly bulky, but it was tidy 
and sound. The nephew was interested at 
once. I empowered him to act for the chil- 
dren, and he did, to their considerable benefit. 

After my wife's funeral I had gone to a new 
house. In packing up for the change, I had 
been unable to find some of her belongings, 
heirlooms that had been in her mother's family, 
some of them about two hundred years. One 
item was a creamy fabric of old lace, her moth- 



26 Spirit Life 

er's and her grandmother's bridal veil. An- 
other was an oblong charm of old gold, used 
as a sachet, attached to a fine gold chain. 
Others were a few pieces of old china, and some 
of silver. Careful search had failed to disclose 
these things, and I had given them up as hav- 
ing been lost or stolen during the confusion 
following that swift death. 

I was informed through Mrs. Hesse that in 
the storeroom of my new house, under a pile 
of trunks, in a packing-box bound with a small 
rope, I would find them all, and several other 
things that I had not missed. Search of the 
storeroom revealed the packing-case, with all 
the missing articles in it, and many more. I 
never had seen that box, nor do I now know 
by whom it was packed, nor how it came to be 
under those trunks. 

So far as it is possible to admit general ex- 
planation, part of this message would be 
brushed aside as mere mind reading by those 
to whom mind reading is assumed to be an 
accepted commonplace. Later on I will try 
to explain that explanation. My own knowl- 
edge of telepathy discloses elements that are 
at least subspiritual, derived from powers mid- 
way between the mental and the supermental 



Spirit Life 27 

which I decline to believe are kicking about 
all over the place, where everyone may see. 
But the main parts of the communication cov- 
ered matters of which I knew nothing what- 
ever at the moment. In fact I had to make a 
journey and set up a court action before I 
could be sure some one or some intervening, 
intangible influence was not trying to fool me. 

In subsequent years I had several other 
messages from my wife. Once, I saw her. 

It was at the house of a man prominent in 
the business and the art interests of Chicago 
— an afternoon session, in a room fairly well 
darkened. In the company that day were 
Doctor Thomas, a liberal preacher then widely 
known; the Reverend David Swing; Joseph 
Jefferson; his son, Charles Jefferson; Charles 
Jefferson's wife; Mr. and Mrs. James H. Mc- 
Vicker; and a half dozen other people, all well 
known, all above suspicion of anything so mean 
as collusion, none well enough up in that sort 
of thing to be capable of collusion even if they 
had not for other reasons been above suspicion 
as aforesaid. And none of them save Doctor 
Swing and Mr. and Mrs. McVicker had ever 
seen my wife. 



28 Spirit Life 

It was only her face I saw, pallid but clear, 
with her own sweet smile, and a whispered re- 
gret that she was not strong enough to show 
herself and at the same time talk to me. 

I heard from her in many places, many 
cities, for when I was traveling I was also 
investigating. What a weary time! How 
many nauseous tricks and rawfaced swindles, 
how many cheap peurilities, sordid, pitiful im- 
postures, to one true thing! I wanted to find 
out what there was in this belief they called 
spiritualism — and I did. 

I found that it enwrapped a truth not un- 
derstood by those who sought it with selfish 
purposes and unclean minds ; that it was not at 
all the thing it was thought to be by most of 
those who believed it, but that it was worth 
while because if intelligently and earnestly fol- 
lowed, it led to a province of real life and light. 

Once in Denver I had put in a rather wild 
night in distinguished company, and we had 
all made fools of ourselves to an extent that 
lapped over into a Turkish bath about the 
time the east began to glow. That afternoon 
I called upon a clairvoyant of good repute, 
commended by a famous poet who himself had 
been one of our bacchanals. And that woman 



Spirit Life 29 

had nothing for me but tears, the sorrow of 
the dear girl who grieved for me that I should 
be so weak. It well set down the pegs that 
made my music, as joyous as I was. 

The last time was some ten years after, in 
Cleveland. She told me then that I would 
hear from her no more, nor have any contact 
until I too had gone over; that she was about 
to pass on to another region of life far enough 
away to make impossible any backward look 
to this one. What that phase would be she 
would not try to tell me. 

"It is unlike anything you know of, where 
you are. You will know when you too are 
here. Be content to leave something to be 
learned." 

I may say here that the term of contact fol- 
lowing physical dissolution varies with the 
variations of individual character. Advanced 
people go beyond reach or recall in a very little 
while — considering. Others of more earthy 
quality hang around through many years, 
sometimes even a hundred. Instance for the 
shorter terms my wife, for the longer my 
grandfather. 

My wife had no religion in the church sense, 



30 Spirit Life 

but a fine intuition of eternal things. My 
mother's father held a hard and terrible Scots 
form of Hebraic religion, without spirituality. 
She had early transit. Grandfather had to 
stick around about a half century getting his 
religion knocked out of him, before he could 
get away to where he belonged. I know that 
because I talked with him almost fifty years 
after he had gone over, and he told me a few 
things with regret tempered by patience, seem- 
ing to take comfort in knowing quite a number 
of fellows who were in for a stay longer than 
his own — a kind of consolation that may seem 
open to question, ethically, though far be it 
from me — 

THE CHICAGO HERALD 

At the time I lost my wife I was on The 
Chicago Times, doing dramatic reviews, minor 
editorial and feature stuff, and being sent 
hither and yon, without previous notice, to in- 
terview big men. Wilbur F. Storey, our Old 
Man, was one of the five great American 
editors. Henry Watterson is the only one of 
them remaining above ground. Excepting 
Dr. George L. Miller of the Omaha Herald, 



Spirit Life 31 

Mr. Storey was the best Old Man I ever 
worked for. Silent, apparently severe, re- 
served, rigid, a master of newspaper policy 
and the newspaper craft, he was supposed to 
have a head of ice and a heart of stone. As a 
matter of fact he was sympathetic, quick to rec- 
ognize ability, generous though not showy in 
rewarding it. A long fight with a hard world 
had given him a manner that seemed disdain- 
fully aloof, but was in fact protective. 

When I came back to my duties he sent for 
me. He had lost his own wife, a noble woman 
who had shared his earlier vicissitudes and 
lived only long enough to see him firmly seated 
in a high place of power. He wanted me to 
go away for a month or two, to forget my sor- 
row in new scenes and among new people. I was 
touched of course, but it seemed to me I could 
best lose myself in closer application to my 
work. He fell in with this, and to make the 
work more engrossing he sent me on the road, 
without instructions. 

"If I thought you needed instructions," 
said he, when I had asked for them, "I 
wouldn't send you out." 

So it was I went a-roving. The next three 
months will stay with me while memory holds, 



32 Spirit Life 

for they were the most ample of my life up to 
that time. I was on personal terms with every 
public man in the nation, and the stuff they 
handed me was good enough to be picked up by 
all the newspapers, and to start several inter- 
esting fights. It was a presidential year. 

When I came in, late in October, I called 
on Mrs. Ella M. Dole, a clairaudient — a moth- 
erly, quiet, sane woman, who months before 
had told me I was going to suffer a bitter loss, 
the effect whereof would color and influence 
my course and my occupation. This time Mrs. 
Dole told me I was on the verge of a risky 
venture; that I would leave The Times, found 
a new paper, build it into a quick success, and 
lose it in a year — just a year and a few days 
over. 

When some years earlier I was managing 
editor of The Inter Ocean, my desk was in Mr. 
Palmer's room. Frank W. Palmer's. He 
was editor in chief. A friendship amounting 
to affection had grown from that purely pro- 
fessional relationship. Not long after I had 
transferred from The Inter Ocean to The 
Times, Mr. Palmer lost his hold upon The 
Inter Ocean, and with it most of his fortune. 
He had powerful friends at Washington, and 



Spirit Life 33 

through their efforts he was made Postmaster 
of Chicago. 

The newspaper situation in Chicago being 
distinctly unfavorable to the administration, 
it occurred to me (I was a republican) that 
there was room for a new paper, and that un- 
less I were willing to be someone else's man 
all my days I might as well break away and 
create one, myself. 

I took counsel of General Logan, Mr. Pal- 
mer, General Grant, A. M. Jones, chairman, 
and Dan Sheppard, secretary of the State Re- 
publican central committee, and several others, 
who approved the idea and offered me such 
backing as I might need outside my own re- 
sources. I was in receipt of good royalties from 
the play I have mentioned, and other revenue 
of a nature like that ascribed by Hamlet to 
Horatio. And so, on the 25th of May, 1881, 
the first number of The Chicago Herald ap- 
peared. I was boss — editor in chief. 

November showed a book profit of about 
twenty-five per cent. In eight months I had 
put a new paper round the corner. The en- 
tire expenditure up to that month had 
amounted to less than fifty thousand dollars. 



34 Spirit Life 

I thought, good easy man, full surely my great- 
ness was a-ripening, when there came a frost — 

How it was worked, it took me a year to 
find out; nor will I tell it now, for it is done 
and gone, and all for the best when all is told. 
But on the thirtieth of May, 1882, I, being 
then in Washington, was informed that I was 
out. Utterly and forever out; and with me 
General Logan, Frank Palmer, and all my 
crowd. 

It was the cleverest piece of work I've 
ever known, and my hat is off to every recollec- 
tion of the genius who put it over, at no ex- 
pense to himself, but at ours most sorely. He 
was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not 
look upon his like again. In glory at this 
hour I hope — or maybe. At any rate he is 
not with us in the body any more ; and the same 
is true of Mrs. Dole, good soul, who saw far- 
ther ahead than I, with truer vision. 

In respect of The Herald, Mrs. Blade, an- 
other sensitive, gave me warning after I had 
it going that I was only building a bridge for 
others to cross. Mrs. Blade had little enough 
to tell me, bad as it was, though she did emit 
one epigram: that it was "better to wear out 
than to rust out." I think I kept away from 



Spirit Life 35 

her after that because I wanted information, 
not proverbial philosophy. 

There was another sensitive in her neighbor- 
hood whom I visited in company with Will J. 
Davis. She was flustered and begged to be 
excused, for a reason: She had just declined 
to sit for a caller because "a spirit came with her 
and told me she would die" before night. We 
were sufficiently interested to follow this up, 
and sure enough the caller (a woman) did die 
standing up, as it were, within two hours after 
the call. Her home was close by and she was 
easy to trace. 

A similar incident indirectly connected with 
the big tragedy of Will Davis's life came to 
my notice shortly after the Iroquois theatre 
fire. Mrs. De Wolfe in West Madison street 
had declined to keep an appointment she had 
given a young man, a stranger, with whom 
came "a spirit" who said the caller would die 
a painful death within twenty-four hours. His 
name was in the list of those who perished in 
that disaster — a disaster for which Will was 
not personally responsible, as I happen to 
know, for he not only did not order the 
exits closed, but was unaware of their being 
closed at all. He never made this public. As 



36 Spirit Life 

manager of the house he let the blame fall on 
his own shoulders. Rest his soul! He was 
a good man, loyal in his friendships, and true 
to himself. 

A FOBEGLEAM OF DRAMA 

Before the change that began in the north, 
part of my newspaper work, as I have said, 
had been in the criticism of drama. Toward 
the close of that phase of it I had reshaped 
several plays with approval, and had written 
one comedy that had considerable vogue during 
five seasons. Excepting a venture in col- 
laboration with the late George Manville Fenn, 
while I was living in England, I did nothing 
more along that line until 1896, when the actor 
Frederic Warde urged me to try my hand 
again. I had long borne in mind a possibility 
offered in a short story by D'Israeli, built 
around an incident in the life of Skanderbeg. 
I outlined the idea to Fred, who offered to 
produce the play if I would write it. I fin- 
ished the script in June of that year, but the 
play was not produced until October of 1897. 

Meantime I got into a business venture with 
some people at Cleveland and Toronto, and 
by reason of circumstances irrelevant to this 



Spirit Life 37 

narrative I became the centre of a six- weeks' 
controversy between the spiritists and the 
churchmen of Cleveland. It was carried on 
through The Voice, a high-class, clever Sunday 
paper, edited by Will Sage, who later won 
wide notice bv his critical work in the Cleve- 
land Leader. While this squabble was in 
course, I became acquainted with several lead- 
ing local media. One of these, Mrs. Ulrich, 
the first time I called upon her, told me with 
considerable particularity about the play, 
though I am satisfied she knew of me only as 
having written a letter in The Voice express- 
ing inverted laudation of certain mediumistic 
operations. Her statement was made without 
hesitation, and included a description of the 
work, and an irritating prophecy. It was to 
the effect that there would be two productions, 
the first a bitter disappointment to me, but the 
second, "a long while after," a greater success 
than I had dreamed of or hoped for. 

Another woman, Mrs. Lake, timid and retir- 
ing, but very earnest, gave me identical infor- 
mation in the trance condition. Mrs. Ulrich 
had not employed the trance. 

The first production was really a disappoint- 
ment or worse, I was ill of pneumonia at the 



38 Spirit Life 

time, and had no chance to be present at any 
of the rehearsals. I saw four performances, 
three at Columbus (Ohio) and one at Norwalk, 
before I had to go first to Arizona, then to 
New York, on matters relating to western in- 
terests that had nothing to do with theatricals. 
We were about to (and did) build the railway 
that connects the Santa Fe main line with the 
Grand Canon. 

In New York I found two of my associates 
were giving considerable time to hunting oc- 
cult phenomena. One of these, Lowrey W. 
Goode, a successful man of affairs formerly 
prominent in Des Moines, was interested in 
"developing a psychic" over in Brooklyn. The 
name of this psychic was Corliss, and they 
styled him Doctor. 

On my own invitation and quite privately I 
crossed the East river one afternoon and found 
in Doctor Corliss' reception room a singularly 
uninformed young man, a perennial fountain 
of monologue. He said he was the doctor's 
manager, and imparted a good deal of his own 
personal history. It was interesting only 
when it came to his occult powers, which had 
awakened sufficiently to let him see phantoms 
of men and women long since gone beyond. 



Spirit Life 39 

He said he was guided by one of these, the 
"sperrut of Annie Bulleen, that was Queen 
of England wunst." This royal sperrut had 
found him in the gutter and by wise counsel 
and watchful care had built him up. The dis- 
covery that gentle, unhappy Anne Boleyn had 
taken to prowling the gutters of New York 
and forgotten how to pronounce her own name 
had just dawned upon me in all its disconcert- 
ing significance when word came that the doctor 
would see me. 

He was worth while. I got more informa- 
tion about that play. 

First, that I had written it in room 47, Ken- 
nard House, Cleveland, which was true, though 
I had to confirm the room number later by 
inquiry at that hotel. Next, that I had been 
helped in the work by James Hobart Mc- 
Vicker, my friend aforementioned, who had 
passed over the year before. Then, that the 
company was in dire trouble at (I think it was) 
Brainerd, Minnesota — which was confirmed 
by a telegram that was handed me when I re- 
turned to the city. Then, that I would have 
to close it out and wait several years before 
another production would be made; that this 
other production would be highly prosperous ; 



40 Spirit Life 

and finally, that on an offer for the European 
rights, I must and would make an outright 
sale, because while the work would go all right 
in England, it would not do at all for Ger- 
many, where the English managers would try 
to put it over. 

I saw Doctor Corliss that one time only. 
He passed away shortly afterward ; and I am 
not aware of the subsequent doings of Annie 
Bulleen nor of her chatty gutter-find. But to 
save the play I did, though with extreme reluc- 
tance, close the season at Chicago in January 
following. It had been a solid agony of one- 
night stands, plagued by the bandogs of seasons 
past wherewith I had not been in any way con- 
cerned, distrained for the debts of others, and 
at all points discordant, unhappy, futile and 
unsalaried. The two points of comfort to me 
were that the play itself never had drawn an ad- 
verse criticism, and that Mr. Warde had buffeted 
his way through all his troubles courageously, 
as a good man should. The rest of the three- 
fold prophecy about the play remains as yet 
unacted. I pray it may be as fully justified 
of events as the first part most assuredly was. 

More than ten years before the play was 
written, Mrs. De Wolfe " described to me a 



Spirit Life 41 

vision she had of a mountain side with a bridge 
over a ravine, and two men, strangely dressed, 
one in what seemed to be armor, fighting with 
swords on the bridge. That was all she could 
see, but she said I would write a story in a 
book or a play where such a scene would occur. 

Sitting in front at the first performance I 
saw of "Iskander" (that was the name of my 
play), this forecast came to my mind with a 
rush; for the climax of the third act showed 
just such a fight — and on a bridge. An old 
Roman bridge, supposed to span the river 
Drin, on the east frontier of Epirus. The 
episode was sequent in the plot of the play, 
and as a matter of fact was taken from an in- 
cident in D'Israeli's story. It recalled but was 
not suggested by Mrs. De Wolfe's vision. 

With me that evening was E. Laurence Lee, 
an actor of considerable distinction, who had 
brought along one of his character-studies, a 
Chicago river bridge-tender. This operative, 
being then soporific through overmuch drink, 
was in a doze when the bridge scene culminated. 
Iskander, endangered by superior numbers 
backing his antagonist, swung over the side, 
ripped out the keystone, and went down with 
the ruin in a highly spectacular manner. The 



42 Spirit Life 

house roared applause. The operative waked 
up and found out what had happened. 

"If I'd been tendin' that bridge," said he, 
"this wouldn't have happened." 

THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH 

Thus far I have dealt only with prophecy 
wholly or in part fulfilled, falling within my 
own experience. I have not done with these, nor 
with the reverse side of the case, but I am going 
to include another, outside my individual 
radius, and foreign to the ways of civilization, 
but interesting as showing the presence of 
prophetic power and clear sight among peoples 
in an order of life less tangled than our own. 

Above the fifty-sixth parallel and east of 
the Klondyke there are not as yet more than 
a thousand white men. That is a vast geo- 
graphical stretch. It runs up to the rim of 
the continent, and to the east it extends across 
the Hudson Bay and to the boundary of 
Labrador. It is rich in soil, in timber, min- 
erals and fisheries, and it will not long remain 
empty. The white men now there are fore- 
lopers, breaking the way for busy populations 
yet to be. 



Spirit Life 43 

Among them at the time of which I write 
was a really big man named Cornwallis. When 
Edmonton was an outpost city, he operated 
twenty-eight regularly organized lines of trans- 
portation, reaching f anwise thence in all direc- 
tions save south, and did more than anyone 
else, perhaps, to break the old solitudes and 
dispel the erroneous notion that the north is 
inaccessible and of harsh climate. In truth, 
as some of us knew before, it is a noble coun- 
try, wonderful to see and good to be in or to 
live in at any season of any year. 

For a long time Cornwallis traded independ- 
ently among the Indian tribes west of the 
Hudson Bay, speaking their dialects and living 
as they lived. He is unusually hard headed, 
of level common sense and business ability 
sufficient to have made him rich. The wilder- 
ness has not won him to wildness. He is 
enough at home in the cities to be unnoticeable 
among other well dressed men, and he is an 
influential member of the Alberta parliament. 

We had been talking about the Indian idea 
of honor, and that sense of responsibility to 
invisible powers which enters so largely into 
the conduct of their affairs. 



44 Spirit Life 

Without attempting to reword his story, I 
will give its points as he gave them to me. 

His party reached an Indian village near 
the Great Slave lake late one afternoon and 
found a young squaw so alarmed over the pro- 
longed absence of her husband that an old 
wise man had been asked to look for him "with 
the eyes of the spirit." It seemed the husband 
had gone out to hunt moose, and had promised 
to return after two days. Four or five days 
had passed and brought no sight nor word of 
him, and they were fearful for his safety. The 
old man went into what looked like an hyp- 
notic sleep, out of which he spoke comfort. 
The hunter, he said, had followed a moose 
long and far before he got a chance to round 
ahead of it, but had killed it in a place which 
was described. He had cut it up and was on 
his way home, heavy laden with good meat, 
so near he would arrive that evening. 

This was all the old man had to say, but it 
fitted with the facts, for before dark the hun- 
ter came in, packing a* prodigious quantity of 
moose meat. Three or four days later, Corn- 
wallis and his party came upon a place corres- 
ponding with the old man's description, and 
there in the middle of it lay the littered remains 



Spirit Life 45 

of the moose, the tracks of the man, and the 
ashes of his fire. 

Cornwallis used to have with him on his 
travels a halfbreed of much taciturnity, 
who had a way of leaving the camp fire and 
withdrawing to the shadows for an hour or 
two. Sometimes he would rise from his 
blanket in the dead of night and disappear, 
saying nothing. They never asked him why 
he did it, nor where he went. He would come 
back and roll himself in his blanket again, and 
go to sleep. But in the morning before they 
broke camp he would tell what was going to 
happen that day. Sometimes it would be an 
unexpected deflection into a piece of country 
with certain features of hill or wood or stream, 
and the reasons for it, and what would be come 
upon there. Sometimes there would be other 
travelers to meet, in surroundings he wquld 
picture out. These things always occurred, 
just as he said they would. He got the fore- 
gleams while he was in the dark, alone. 

"Hunches," I said, when Cornwallis told 
me about him. "Do you never get them vour- 
self?" 

Half introspectively, he looked at me. 



46 Spirit Life 

"If you were to put in much time up there, 
where there is nothing but daylight, starlight, 
space and silence, you'd have hunches your- 
self," he said, and committed himself no far- 
ther. 

Likely enough. I've known old prospec- 
tors who through lonely years in the mountains 
acquired a sense of things unseen; and there 
are strange tales of second sight among the 
Warm Spring Indians and the Klamaths in 
the Columbia River country and British 
Columbia. 

I told this tale to Dr. Carlos Montezuma, 
born an Apache Indian, now a properly 
qualified physician having a successful prac- 
tice in Chicago. 

"All Indians know these things," said Doc- 
tor Montezuma. "Your spiritualists have 
nothing to teach us, but much to unlearn." 

In saying that, Doctor Montezuma sent a 
shaft home i' the clout. They really have much 
to unlearn, and very little to teach either to 
Indians or whites. Some of their media can 
use the power of prophecy, but not one of them, 
so far as I have been able to discover, knows 
what the power is, how it is directed, nor whence 
derived. The single fact of value to me in that 



Spirit Life 47 

behalf is that in widely separated cases, 
prophecy has actually been delivered to me, and 
events have borne it out. 

Professor James of Harvard once said that 
to disprove the dictum that all crows are black, 
it would be necessary to produce only one white 
crow. Now, real prophecy is a white crow for 
rarity. But it exists. I have seen enough such 
white crows to make a flock. 

A PRAGMATICAL GHOST 

I had two sittings w T ith a Mrs. Lukens, in 
Louisiana Avenue, Washington. They were 
separated by an interval of two weeks. I tried 
them at the suggestion of Dr. Phoebus Baxter, 
then chief medical dispensing officer of the 
United States Army. Mrs. Lukens believed 
herself to be controlled by the spirit of Leopold 
de Meyer, a famous musician. A more impa- 
tient or dictatorial control I've never come 
across. At the second setting I ventured to 
question some statement that seemed to me 
unsound. 

"Don't contradict me," came with a burst. 
"I'll bet you every dollar this woman has in 
the world that I am right." 



48 Spirit Life 

I withdrew the question. I don't recall just 
what it was, but I can't forget that sporting 
offer. 

The conversation went on to cover events 
known to me as having marked de Meyer's pro- 
fessional work in America. "Corroborative 
detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude 
to a bald and unconvincing narrative." He or 
it claimed to have died the bodily death several 
years before. 

At the time, I was associate editor of The 
National Republican (now The Washington 
Post). Two weeks later there came to my 
desk a copy of Freund's Musical Journal, just 
issued, and the first thing I saw in it was the 
announcement of the death of Leopold de 
Meyer in. Europe, the week before. I have no 
doubt the control was genuine, but likewise 
there was not the slightest doubt he was a liar. 
He had impersonated de Meyer to me two 
weeks before, while the real de Meyer was still 
in the flesh. 

"from the vasty deep" 

It is common with media to pretend to com- 
ply with a wish that some certain personality 
be produced. The benefit of a doubt may be 



Spirit Life 49 

extended now and then, where the medium is 
imposed upon by a discarnate cheat, as in that 
case, but their writs have no force in shadow 
land They can not command visits from desig- 
nated shades, no matter how ready they are to 
take money for assuming to do it. 

"I can call spirits from the vasty deep," said 
Glendower, vaunting himself. 

"And so can I," snapped Hotspur, "or so can 
any man. But will they come when you do call 
for them?" 

Glendower made no answer to that. It is 
possible for a clean soul to manifest itself while 
it still remains near enough, but it seldom hap- 
pens so. Unclean ones, small and dark, come 
when they will to come, and can ; not when they 
are called. It is a rare occasion when any of 
them cries a truthful "adsum" to even the most 
strenuous requisition. I am reminded of John 
G. Saxe's adjuration to gabby ghosts of the 
bogus de Meyer variety : 

If in your new estate you can not rest 
But must return, oh, grant us this request : 
Come with a noble and celestial air, 
And prove your titles to the names you bear; 



50 Spirit Life 

Give some clear tokens of your heavenly birth ; 
Write as good English as you wrote on earth; 
And, what was once superfluous to advise, 
Don't tell, I beg you, such egregious lies. 

"the everlasting now" 

Our solar system is traveling toward the star 
Aldebaran, a sun a million times the size of 
ours. Aldebaran moves in an ellipse still farther 
flung, toward another and a greater sun. If 
you could stand upon the farthest of them all, 
there would be others still as far away — and 
so on, forever, and forever. To the Ineffable 
that holds these endless systems in perfect and 
harmonious balance, there is no time, neither 
past nor future, but only "a universal Here, 
an everlasting Now." 

That is obvious; and being so, it also must 
be true that what we call the future is quite as 
much a fixity as what we call the past. 

To say this is not to declare fatalism, in the 
abject Arabian sense. I take leave to back it 
up with the authority of the Westminster 
Assembly, whose formulary after declaring 
God to be "a spirit, infinite, eternal and un- 
changeable," omnipresent, omnipotent and 
omniscient, goes on to say that "He hath fore- 
ordained whatsoever comes to pass." Isaiah 



Spirit Life 51 

speaks of Him as "declaring the end from the 
beginning, and from ancient times the things 
that are not yet done." 

Here is no quibble, nor any attempt to limit 
the illimitable. It is a declaration basal in the 
structure of one of the greatest of all modern 
religions. It involves no derogation of the 
human will, for will is a power, not a faculty, 
and the laws governing its use and direction 
are not in conflict with other laws. 

It is there — the future, with all its happen- 
ings. Now and then comes a rift, a vista is 
opened, fleeting, fragmentary, but lucid. 
There is nothing miraculous about it. It is 
natural as anything else, only we do not 
understand all that lies back of it. The whole 
past was once a future, and it has been acted 
out. By chance? There is no such thing, for 
if all were not parts of a settled order, nothing 
whatever could possibly be. By the mutable 
will of a placable god? No, for such gods die 
painfully, among their worshipers. "Sweep 
away the illusion of time," as Carlyle advised, 
and the answer will begin to appear. 

An intelligence moving on a higher plane of 
life has over us some such advantage of vision 
as a man on a hilltop has over one shut in a 



52 Spirit Life 

valley. Given the sympathetic element and an 
organism open to it, there is no more mystery 
in communication between such an intelligence 
and others on this lower plane than there is in 
the transmission of intelligence by electrical 
impulse over wide distances, on etheric waves. 
But it is a high thing, no more common than it 
should be. Bearing in mind the processes fol- 
lowing physical death, it is not difficult to 
understand, yet our knowledge can go but a 
little way beyond a recognition of the fact, and 
the method. Nor is it necessary we should be 
farther informed. When in the ascending 
scale of life we have spiritually risen far enough, 
fuller knowledge will come of itself. To 
desire it now is a natural part of that ferment 
which is growth; but to grope for it would be 
like grappling with infant fingers at a shoreless 
sea, and closing our hands on water. We have 
other things to do, moreover, that cry for the 
doing. It is a wise providence that hides from 
beasts what men, from men what angels know. 
In our fleshly condition, consciousness is 
reached through senses that are affected or 
actuated by things outside the body, and these 
senses are commonly mistaken for conscious- 
ness, though they are transitory, while con- 



Spirit Life 53 

sciousness is permanent. It is to the spirit the 
sensorium of the soul, quite as the brain is the 
sensorium of the body. The brain and the 
body "die." The etheral body is thereupon lib- 
erated, carrying the soul and the spiritual body 
within it. In turn the etheral body is cast aside, 
and the spiritual body, with its conscious intel- 
ligence, passes beyond. Consciousness remains 
what it was, but emerges from its obscuring 
folds and rises higher as these changes suc- 
cessively take place. The higher it rises, the 
more it transcends the limitation of time. 

This brings us to the place where prophecy 
becomes possible, and where it is proper to show 
how it comes. 

There are people so constituted, physically 
and psychically, that their (inner) conscious- 
ness may rise to contact with consciousness set 
free, and share in the command of vastly wider 
horizons both of past and future than are open 
to the rest of us. At such times their outer 
senses may or may not be active, but the interior 
faculty of consciousness is in temporary inde- 
pendent action. It retains connection with the 
body and the objective senses, through which 
it sends messages, to be delivered by the phys- 
ical organs of speech, 



54 Spirit Life 

Where this psycho-physical organism is 
found, real prophecy is possible; but nowhere 
else. Though trance is sometimes employed, 
such a medium usually speaks in the ordinary 
way, having every appearance of normality. 
The half breed of the Great Slave Lake was 
such an one. His process was simple. When 
he felt the intimation, he did what you hear so 
many ineffectual men and so many women of 
too much leisure talk about doing and really 
should do permanently. He " withdrew into 
the silence." 

THE UNSEEN REALITIES 

Gilliatt sometimes found in his nets curious 
marine organisms that were not perceptible 
in water, but became so at once they were lifted 
into air, and this made him speculate upon 
the possibility that in the air also organisms 
might exist, invisible there, but plain enough 
in an element as much finer than air as air is 
finer than water. 

We have less ground for assuming that all 
life and all sense must cease when we do here, 
or even in another stage next to this one, than 
for assuming the opposite. "To the minnow/' 
says Teufelsdrokh, "every cranny and pebble, 



Spirit Life $$ 

and quality and accident, of its little native 
creek may have become familiar," but the min- 
now is not aware of the ocean, with its teeming, 
multiform, sometimes monstrous life, its moun- 
tainous heavings, its myriad man-made ships. 
Yet the ocean, the life, the ships and the men 
are there, under a scopeless firmament flecked 
with brave floating continents of cloud, fretted 
at night with golden fire, the light of other 
worlds. 

Faith in all ages has postulated a hereafter. 
Higher knowledge has tended latterly toward 
its acceptance as fact. There have been cases 
in which individuals still in the body claim to 
have temporarily reached the plane of spiritual 
consciousness, and made demonstration of an- 
other state of life ; but there is neither sequence 
nor continuity to such experiences, and we are 
told that sometimes the first exaltation and 
ecstasy are succeeded by other experiences of 
a nature too horrible and degrading for expres- 
sion. If you want to know more about that, 
read "The Varieties of Religious Experience," 
a book written by Professor James, who was 
a distinguished scholar, holding the chair of 
philosophy in Harvard University, a Doctor 
of Laws, a corresponding member of the Insti- 



56 Spirit Life 

tute of France and of many other authoritative 
associations. Professor James contributed 
much to this department of knowledge. 



SIR OLIVER LODGE ON ETHERAL 

BODIES 

In his work on "Life and Matter," Sir Oliver 
Lodge says of those who think reality is limited 
to its terrestrial manifestations that they 
"doubtless have a philosophy of their own, to 
which they are entitled and to which at any 
rate they are welcome; but if they set up to 
teach others that monism signifies a limitation 
of mind to the potentialities of matter as at 
present known ; if they teach a pantheism which 
identifies God with nature in this narrow sense ; 
if they hold that mind and what they call matter 
are so intimately connected that no transcend- 
ence is possible ; then such philosophers must be 
content with an audience of uneducated per- 
sons, or if writing as men of science, must hold 
themselves liable to be opposed by other men of 
science who are able, in their own judgment, to 
take a wider survey of existence, and to perceive 
possibilities to which the said narrow and over- 
definite philosophers were blind/' 



si 



58 Spirit Life 

Such a wider survey of existence brings into 
view a line of fact that leaves only a little for 
inference in explaining prophetic power, 
though it does not extend as far as the faculty 
which sets that power in action. Any philo- 
sophic view not hampered by tradition or 
coarsely physical data must discern that reality 
is not "limited to its terrestrial manifestations" ; 
that life does not terminate with the death of 
the body; that it proceeds farther than the 
senses permitted us here may trace its progress ; 
that we are part of a universe into which noth- 
ing can come, because it includes all, and out 
of which nothing can go, because there is no 
outside. 

I do not know of anyone who has treated this 
subject with more direct sincerity than Sir 
Oliver, nor of any who has received with calmer 
mind nor weighed with cooler hands all evidence 
submitted or obtained. He has applied to it 
the methods that prevail in physical science, 
modifying the application to suit the difference 
in substance; and his conclusions seem to me 
unescapable. Much of the evidence is given in 
two of his books, "Raymond" and "The Sur- 
vival of Man." 

His attitude is briefly and I think fairly out- 



Spirit Life 59 

lined in a newspaper report of the lecture he 
delivered at Rochester some time in the winter 
of 1919-20. Spiritism as we know it now had 
its initial impulse at the hands of the Fox sis- 
ters, in Rochester, about 1848. Sir Oliver 
referred to that in his opening:* 

"To bring evidence of survival to Rochester 
is like bringing coals to Newcastle. Rochester 
began all this trouble, so to speak. Before I 
was born certain things happened in this city 
which as a boy I heard spoken of in ridicule and 
contempt, as outbursts of superstition. I am 
afraid that through the years I agreed with 
this view of Rochester spiritualists. 

'Yet the things which happened in Rochester 
were only the recrudescence of facts as old as 
the hills. All facts are, but rediscovery of them 
crops up from time to time to startle the world 
anew. Then they are forgotten, submerged 
once more. We are accustomed to going 
through life thinking that the things we see, feel 
and hear are all there is. Strange things which 
we can not account for we are apt to regard as 
superstition. 

"The facts regarding spiritualism were al- 



*Sir Oliver has been good enough to check over and approve 
the report as it is reproduced in this place. — W. D. E. 



60 Spirit Life 

ways before the world. The Old Book is full 
of accounts of mediums and their work. We 
read in the Old Testament particularly that 
they were often consulted. The Witch of 
Endor was only one of a multitude. David 
was wont to go to a medium to learn of things. 
Saul was informed at his last sitting with the 
Witch of Endor that he would die on the mor- 
row, which he did. 

" There is nothing new in spiritualism any 
more than was in the X-ray or argon. They 
were facts discovered, used and applied in one 
age more than another. It is the same with 
spiritualism. Its facts are being studied now 
in a scientific age and reduced to concrete form. 
Spiritualism is being taken out of the hands of 
many unbalanced people who have been asso- 
ciated with the subject too long. 

"Whether existence is or is not is a simple, 
scientific question and ought to be treated as 
such. Death and old age are now being studied 
at the Rockefeller Institute by eminent physi- 
cians. When the researches of these men are 
published they will arouse tremendous interest. 

"It is not known just why an organism dies. 
It may be that if accidents and poison, espe- 
cially the poison it secretes, are kept from it, 



Spirit Life 6l 

its life will go on indefinitely. However that 
may be it is certain that we ourselves go on, 
whatever our bodies do or may do. The mate- 
rial body is simply an instrument we construct, 
a telegraphic instrument of impression. With 
it I am now signaling my thoughts to you, 
expressing them in an artificial way through a 
code called language, a combination of sounds. 
All you get from me are vibrations of the air. 

"In this life we are now obliged to express 
ourselves through physical mediums. We are 
so accustomed to the material side of things that 
we believe that what we do not see, feel or hear 
does not exist, but science is always showing us 
things which do not appeal to our senses. All 
things which come must be interpreted to us by 
our minds. If senses told us all, then animals 
would know as much as we, for animals have 
as good senses as we; but they have not our 
interpretative minds, and that is the difference. 

"The whole aspect of the world in our minds 
is different from what we see with our eyes. 
We look forth upon a flat dome with a surface 
of sky, but astronomers and other scientists 
have taught us differently. It is now no great 
effort for us to think that the world is traveling 
through space at the rate of nineteen miles a 



62 Spirit Life 

second, thirty times as rapidly as a cannon ball 
goes. How absurd it is for us, then, to say we 
can judge reality by looking at it. 

"The ether of space eludes all our senses, 
yet it is the largest material body in the universe. 
It brings us all light, all heat ; it is responsible 
for electricity, for magnetism, for cohesion." 

Sir Oliver lifted his chair in the air. 

"See, I lift this chair," he said. "I can do 
so because ether is the cohesive force holding 
all its millions of atoms together. We have 
learned that gravitation is also due to ether, 
that it is ether that binds the universe together, 
that ether is this binding, comprehensive thing 
in which all planets, stars and material bodies 
exist. It is the most intangible, intractable 
thing that we know and it has no imperfection. 
I presume that a deep sea fish would find it 
difficult or impossible to discover water. It 
is too completely submerged; that is exactly 
our condition in ether. 

"Why do I say this? Because I believe that 
ether is the medium in which we shall survive." 

Sir Oliver declared that his investigations 
have convinced him that man has both a mate- 
rial and an etheral body associated with spirit 
and soul. He held that if ether binds together 



Spirit Life 63 

the universe and all things down to atoms, it 
must bind man together. Explaining that the 
properties of ether are perfect while those of 
grosser matter are imperfect, Sir Oliver con- 
cluded that the material body wears out and 
uncloaks itself from the etheral body at death, 
the etheral body going on as the house of the 
soul. He recalled the saying of St. Paul about 
man having both a natural body and a spiritual 
body, and he averred that it was this etheral 
body to which St. Paul referred. 

"This is based," said Sir Oliver, "upon much 
scientific analysis. We find many things which 
go out into etheral energy. Electricity is dis- 
embodied matter whose atoms have ceased to 
be material. There is much to do yet to estab- 
lish in a sound, convincing way that man has 
these two bodies, that he takes up existence 
after death with his etheral body. These 
things I hope to work out during the next years 
allowed me." 

Sir Oliver admitted that it was difficult for 
persons who did not understand life beyond 
death to believe in survival. He reminded us 
that it was impossible in past ages to ask people 
to believe that stones could fall from the sky. 
Such talk of falling red-hot stones was then 



64 Spirit Life 

termed superstition, but now science has dis- 
covered these falling stones are meteors, extra- 
terrestrial bodies swept out of space by the 
earth. 

"Our bodies," he said, "are instruments of 
expression. As musical instruments are used, 
so we employ our bodies to play our thoughts 
to the world. It is unreasonable to think that 
the destruction of the instrument means the 
destruction of mind, the player. The player 
may not be able thereafter to perform to this 
world as before; but he may borrow an inferior 
instrument for expression, and I may operate 
through a medium. 

"A medium is one who allows his or her 
physiological organism to be controlled by 
other than the usual one." 

Sir Oliver spoke of religion and belief in a 
hereafter as founded purely upon faith. He 
recalled that many speak of a great gulf exist- 
ing between this life and that beyond. 

"Is it a veil or something which removes them 
from our ken?" he asked. "No, we are blinded 
by our eyes, restricted by matter. To com- 
municate with us those of the other world must 
operate through matter." 

Sir Oliver said that in 1883 he found mental 



Spirit Life 65 

telepathy was an indisputable fact. He said 
he had been skeptical in investigating it origin- 
ally. 

"I do not know now whether ether is em- 
ployed in thought transfer," he said, "but I 
have proved beyond question or doubt that the 
thought in the mind of one person can arouse a 
similar thought in the mind of another person 
thousands of miles away. Tfiat fact is now 
established. Telepathy justifies a belief in 
inspiration and prayer. 

"A genius feels that certain ideas are pouring 
into him from sources for which he is not re- 
sponsible. He seems to be receiving the ideas 
of others and using them. Inspiration may 
come from the lofty thoughts and worthy ideas 
of other minds. I suppose genius and inspira- 
tion are the highest powers of the medium. 
Every human being has the power to influence 
other minds for good. Our thoughts should be 
aspiring ones." 

Fantasma and apparitions are not supernat- 
ural things to the mind of Sir Oliver, but mental 
impressions. He told of a woman- he knew who 
had a vision in the nighttime of her sailor son 
standing beside her bed in dripping clothes. 
She was frightened, and when she did not hear 



66 Spirit Life 

from him thought he was dead. Services were 
held for him. Six months later he suddenly 
returned, and it was learned that he had fallen 
from a mast into the far Pacific ocean and was 
brought back from drowning after two hours of 
hard work. 

"His perturbed and half -dislocated spirit 
in those hours of uncertainty during which 
he was unconscious impressed itself through 
space upon the mind of the one it loved 
most, his mother," explained Sir Oliver. "It is 
not unusual. I could tell many instances like 
that." 

Sir Oliver interpolated a warning here for 
people to exercise caution and not to receive all 
strange messages as truth or all mediums as 
capable. He said good mediums were rare and 
there were truth-telling dreams, but that these 
were not common. He termed ouija boards 
and the like "toys." 

"Good judgment is required," he said. "Be- 
cause things come in an unusual way it does 
not follow that they are true. Unbalanced 
people should keep off the subject. It is better 
to be too skeptical than too credulous. I sym- 
pathize with the skeptic. I was one myself for 
years. 



Spirit Life 67 

"I am now thoroughly convinced that we 
survive death and go on, for better or for worse, 
with the same mind, thoughts and general life 
as before." 

Sir Oliver told of his first experience with a 
medium, Mrs. Piper, of Boston, who still lives 
but no longer has her mediumistic powers. 
That was in 1889 and came about through 
Prof. William James insisting that Mrs. Piper 
did inexplicable things. Sir Oliver and other 
interested scientists had detectives shadow her 
to see if she obtained her information about 
persons through material ways. Nothing de- 
veloped to establish such an explanation, and 
Sir Oliver asked for and was given a seance. 

"At this first sitting," he said, "relations of 
mine came through the room unmistakably. 
An aunt inclined to attempt to instill religion 
into me, came through to argue in her own voice 
and manner. This experience should have con- 
vinced me of the truth, but it did not. I 
thought it possible that Mrs. Piper might be 
employing mental telepathy, digging thoughts 
out of my mind and visualizing them before 
me." 

Sir Oliver next said he had Mrs. Piper con- 
verse with relations of an older generation. 



68 Spirit Life 

Stories of their early lives were told which he 
later verified through talks with old folk who 
knew them. 

But he still thought it possible the medium 
had obtained these thoughts through telepathic 
channels. It was the war which brought the 
proof for which he sought, at least proof to his 
satisfaction. Dead soldiers appeared in 
seances to tell of kits left at certain spots and 
what they contained. 

"Those were good cases," said Sir Oliver. 
"No one on earth could have known what was 
in those kits." 

He related many instances of that sort, in- 
cluding one which happened to his wif e. While 
at a seance Lady Lodge suddenly was met by 
an outburst of pleading from a soldier in the 
other world. The distressed spirit said it had 
left behind a kit which would be sent to his 
family. He said it contained a lock of a girl's 
hair and some letters which would cause his 
family great misery. He wanted Lady Lodge 
to try to have this evidence destroyed. They 
decided in the conversation to ask a certain offi- 
cial in France to help in the matter. This was 
done. The kit was found where the spirit said, 
and unlocked ; and the lock of hair and letters 



Spirit Life 69 

were burned before it was sent to the dead sol- 
dier's home. 

"Much misery was saved and we are taught 
a lesson by this incident," declared Sir Oliver. 
"We must keep things in such shape that we 
leave nothing behind to worry over. Then we 
won't have to appeal to strangers for help, as 
this boy did." 

Sir Oliver related how final proof had come 
to him of the truth of survival, after spiritual 
conversation with the late Professor Meyers, 
who was asked obscure questions in Greek 
mythology and gave answers in different parts 
of the world, which, pieced together like a jig- 
saw puzzle, gave results. 

Sir Oliver declared the veil between this 
world and the next to be one of senses. 

"Our loved ones who have passed through 
death are all about us, with us, trying to help 
and guide us," he said. "Science is gradually 
laying the foundation of a knowledge of the 
spirit world and existence beyond death which 
will make religion mean more than ever before. 
Religion is now built upon faith, but it will be 
built upon a solid foundation when survival is 



yo Spirit Life 

proved. In my view we have enough scientific 
evidence of survival to amount to this proof." 

THE VISION OF COUNT TOLSTOI 

Prophecy as a power is old in history. Re- 
ferring no farther back than our first century, 
you will find it was very much abroad among 
men, fully recognized in the highest quarters, 
and quite respectable. The thirteenth and 
fourteenth chapters of Paul's First Epistle to 
the Corinthians supply good authority for that 
statement. And then there was royal Saul's 
experience with that cynical old party, the 
Witch of Endor. " Confirmations strong as 
proofs of holy writ," if that means anything to 
you. Let me bring in a more modern witness : 

Count Tolstoi died some time before the war. 
About a year before his death, the Czar re- 
quested his views upon the European situation 
as it then was, and the probable course of world 
events. By way of answer Tolstoi went into 
what spiritists would call a trance — a state of 
self -induced hypnosis — and in that state deliv- 
ered a prophecy. A young woman, a member of 
the family, took down what he said, as he said 
it. Not long after, but while he still lived, it 
was made public and attracted wide though 
slightly amused attention. Then it dropped 



Spirit Life 71 

out of sight and did not reappear until after the 
invasion of Belgium. Here is a translation in 
full: 

"This is a Revelation of events of a Universal 
character which must shortly come to pass : 

"Their spiritual outlines are now before my 
eyes. I see floating upon the surface of the 
sea of human fate the huge silhouette of a nude 
Woman. She is, with her beauty, poise, her 
smile, her jewels, a super- Venus. Nations rush 
madly after her, each of them eager to attract 
her especially. But she, like an eternal courte- 
san, flirts with alL In her Crown of diamonds 
and rubies is engraved her name, 'Commercial- 
ism. 5 As alluring and bewitching as she seems, 
much destruction and agony follow in her wake. 
Her breath, reeking of sordid transactions, her 
voice of metallic character like gold, and her 
look of greed are so much poison to the Nations 
who fall victims to her charms. 

"And behold, she has three gigantic arms with 
three torches of universal corruption in her 
hands. The first torch represents the flame of 
War, that the beautiful courtesan carries from 
city to city and country to country. Patriotism 
answers with flashes of honest flame, but the 



72 Spirit Life 

end is a roar of guns and murderous explosives 
which destroy the countries and slaughter the 
patriots. 

"The second torch bears the flame of Bigotry 
and Hypocrisy. It lights the lamps only in 
Temples and on the altars of sacred institutions. 
It carries the seed of Falsity and Fanaticism. 
It kindles the Minds that are still in cradles and 
follows them to their graves. 

"The third torch is that of the Law, that 
dangerous foundation of all unauthentic tradi- 
tions, which first does its fatal work in the 
Family, then sweeps through the larger world 
of Literature, Art and Statesmanship. 

"The great Conflagration will start about 
1912, set by the torch of the first arm in the 
countries of Southeastern Europe. It will 
develop into a destruction and calamity in 1914. 
In that year I see all Europe in flames and 
bleeding. I hear the lamentations from huge 
battlefields. But after 1915 a great Napo- 
leonic Leader enters upon the stage of the 
bloody Drama. He is a man of little militar- 
istic training, a writer or a journalist, but in his 
grip most of Europe will remain until 1925. 

"The end of the great calamity will mark a 
new political era for the Old World. There 



Spirit Life 73 

will be left no empires or kingdoms, but the 
world will form a Federation of the United 
States of Nations. There will remain only- 
four great giants — the Anglo-Saxons, the 
Latins, the Slavs and the Mongolians. 

"After the year 1925 I see a change in reli- 
gious sentiment. The second torch of the 
Courtesan has brought about the fall of the 
Church. The Ethical idea has almost van- 
ished. Humanity is without moral feeling. 
Then shall come a great Reformer. He wall 
clear the World of the relics of Monotheism and 
lay the cornerstone of the Temple of Panthe- 
ism. God, Soul, Spirit and Immortality will 
be molten in a new regenerating furnace, the 
peaceful beginning of an ethical era. The 
Man destined for this mission is a Mongolian 
Slav. He is already walking the Earth — a 
man of active affairs. He himself does not 
now realize the mission assigned to him by 
the Superior Powers. 

"And, behold, I see the Law, the third torch, 
which has already begun to destroy the Family 
relations, our standards of Art and Morals. 
The relation between Woman and Man is ac- 
cepted as a prosaic Partnership of the Sexes. 
Art has become Realistic Degeneracy. Polit- 



74 Spirit Life 

ical and religious disturbances have shaken the 
Spiritual foundations of all Nations. 

"Only small spots here and there have re- 
mained untouched by those Three destructive 
flames. The anti-National Wars in Europe, 
the Class War of America and the Race Wars 
in Asia have strangled Progress for half a cen- 
tury. In the year 1950, 1 see a heroine of Lit- 
erature and Art rising from the ranks of the 
Latins and Persians — the languorous World- 
tedious and plebeian. 

"It is the light of Symbolism that shall out- 
shine the light of the torches of the Siren, 
'Commercialism.' In place of Polygamy and 
Monogamy of today, there will come a 'Poet- 
ogamy,' relations of the Sexes based funda- 
mentally on the poetic conceptions of life. And 
I see the Nations growing larger and realizing 
that the alluring Woman of their destiny is 
after all but an illusion. 

"There will come a time when the World will 
have no use for armies, hypocritical Religions, 
and degenerate Art. 

"Life is Evolution, and Evolution is develop- 
ment from the simple to the sublimer forms of 
Mind and Body. I see the passing show of the 
World-Drama, in its present form, as it fades 



Spirit Life 75 

like the glow of evening upon the mountains. 
One motion of the hand of Commercialism and 
a new history begins." 

The war, the date of outbreak, and pretty 
much all that happened up to and immediately 
following the armistice, came quite as Tolstoi 
foretold. The advent of his "Napoleonic 
leader" seems to have been delayed, but on 
the other hand he was not to be due until "after 
1915" — a generous margin. As to his Messiah, 
Tolstoi is within geographic and historic 
bounds, for all the Messiahs of whom we have 
record arose in the Orient. 



APPARITIONS 

The ground now mainly occupied by the 
New York Central railway station at Roches- 
ter, New York (my native city), used to be 
called Falls Field. Within the corporate 
limits the Genesee river has three cataracts, 
the second plunging about a hundred feet into 
a wide and beautiful gorge about nine miles 
from the river's mouth. Falls Field began 
on the east bank of the river just above that 
fall, at the west end of what used to be called 
Atwater street (the present Central avenue) 
and stretched about fifteen hundred feet north 
along St, Paul street, almost to a road leading 
into an old quarry on the brink of the gorge. 
The only house there was just outside a board 
fence enclosing the north end. It faced St. 
Paul street. In this house lived my brother- 
in-law, Philip Block. 

THE GHOST OF PHILIP'S MOTHER 

Philip was a building contractor in a suc- 
cessful way of business. A hard-headed man, 

7 6 



Spirit Life 77 

a materialist of extraordinary positivity, ready 
at any moment to take up vociferous battle 
with any comer at the slightest mention of life 
after death. He summed the whole case in 
one declaration : 

"When you're dead you're dead, and that's 
all there is to it." 

Anything to the contrary he held to be de- 
vised by preachers to extract revenue from 
fools. If you wanted to get him going you 
had only to say something about ghosts. 

To me one summer morning he came, solicit- 
ing information about the difference in time 
between Rochester and the town in West 
Prussia where he was born. I figured it to be 
about five hours, whereat he gave signs of an 
uneasy mind. 

"I don't believe in ghosts," he said, "but what 
was it?" 

Reluctantly he told me the story. 

It was a hot summer. The night before had 
been sultry. His sleeping room opened off the 
living room on the ground floor, and he had left 
that door and the opposite window open to 
such air as might be stirring. He could not 
sleep for the heat. All the others were asleep 
upstairs. He had counted the hours and turn- 



78 Spirit Life 

bled about and generally denounced the 
weather and the slow moving hours. It seemed 
to him a week since one o'clock, and he was 
trying to lie still, listening for the stroke of two, 

Then he became aware of a dim light in the 
living room. As he watched, it grew slowly and 
became bright as day. There were no sounds 
of anyone moving. He rolled out of bed and 
looked through the door. 

There, in the other door between the living 
room and the dining room, stood his mother, 
regarding him steadfastly. His mother, as he 
had seen her last in Germany, years before, in 
her dress of that country, so solid to his vision 
that for a moment he was unaware of anomaly 
and started toward her with outstretched hands 
and a cry of "mother!" 

Then he stopped, stock still, and felt the hair 
of his flesh stand up, and a touch of cold air. 
Again he moved forward. But as he moved, 
the figure seemed less solid, and the light began 
to fade. Another step, and it was not there. 
The light sank away, leaving him standing in 
the dark, alone. The clock struck two. 

He struck a light and examined the house, 
inside and out, and the ground around it. All 
the openings were locked save only the window 






Spirit Life 79 

opposite his sleeping room. Nobody could 
have entered through that window without his 
knowledge, for it had been in his direct line of 
sight. How did that figure get in, and where 
did it go ? 

This question was the burden on his mind 
next day, when he asked me to help him fix the 
difference in time. In the Prussian village it 
was seven o'clock in the morning when with us 
it was two o'clock. 

We made a memorandum, and I waited. 
Philip didn't. As days went by he convinced 
himself he had slipped into sleep unaware, and 
dreamed. But about a month later came a 
letter from the old country telling how at 
seven o'clock on that same morning his mother, 
fully dressed and seeming in her usual health, 
had dropped dead of heart failure in the sun- 
light, as she stood outside her door. 

For a long while after that Philip restricted 
his vociferation to politics and business, and 
let the churches bide. I couldn't very well 
touch him up about it, but if ever our conversa- 
tion edged that way, he would say he must have 
been "crazy with the heat or something," which 
I knew was not a satisfactory way out even 



80 Spirit Life 

to his own idea, for he would revert to the same 
question : 

"I don't believe in ghosts. But what was it ?" 

AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH 

Jessie Adelaide Middleton in her "Gray- 
Ghost" book describes an incident that parallels 
the visitation of Philip's mother. 

Mrs. Cardew, wife of the American consul 
in a Highland city of Scotland, had gone to bed 
one evening worried because she had not been 
hearing from her mother, an old lady, living in 
California. All that day she had been troubled 
with "a feeling" that her mother was not well. 

She had been asleep some time when she 
heard a loud, insistent knocking. She sat up 
and exclaimed, "I wonder what that can be." 

The knocking stopped, and she fell asleep 
again, telling herself it must have been one of 
the maids, but presently the knocking was re- 
peated, louder and more prolonged, and waked 
her. It seemed now to come from below, at the 
back of the house. 

As with many of the large houses in Scot- 
land, the outbuildings at the back were con- 
nected with the house by a passage having a 



Spirit Life 81 

glass roof to protect the servants as they passed 
to and fro. Under the roof was an inner back 
door, locked. 

Mrs. Cardew went downstairs carrying a 
lighted candle in a china candlestick, and un- 
bolted and opened the door. Just beyond the 
doorsill stood her mother, dressed in what 
looked like a long white nightgown. The figure 
did not speak, but Mrs. Cardew cried out, 

"Mother!" 
and dropped the candle. The figure vanished. 

She went outside and looked about, but 
everything was quiet and the outer door was 
fast bolted. She groped her way back to the 
house, feeling certain that something had hap- 
pened to her mother. She was frightened to 
the point of being ill, but after a while she went 
to sleep. 

In the morning her first impression was that 
she had dreamed too vividly, but as her mind 
cleared memory came forward with all the 
details, and she went down to the back door. 
The servants were not yet stirring, but there on 
the floor lay the candlestick, shattered. At 
breakfast she told her husband all about it. 

That day brought a cablegram from Cali- 
fornia, saying her mother had died in the night. 



82 Spirit Life 

Reference to time tables showed her death to 
have occurred at the hour of apparition. 

philip's daughter 

Philip had a daughter, Selma, a sweet, win- 
some girl, who passed away in her fourteenth 
year. Selma and my wife were very fond of 
each other. They were much alike in many 
ways. 

One summer morning we were in the back of 
our house in Ohio street. I recall distinctly it 
was about ten o'clock. There came three raps 
on one of the windows. I started to see who 
was there. The yard was empty. 

'You needn't look," my wife said. " Selma is 
dead." 

She was quiet but pale, and she went up to 
her room to prepare for a journey. 

Early in the afternoon came a telegram from 
Rochester saying Selma had died about ten 
o'clock. 

Neither of us told Philip about it. He was 
already sufficiently distressed. 

THE MAN WHO HAD NO USE FOR GHOSTS 

Risking irrelevance, I am impelled to tell of 
another man in another land who did not believe 
in ghosts. 



Spirit Life 83 

One happy summer in the somewhat long ago 
1 used to take bus runs with Otis Skinner or 
Elwyn Barron to places outlying on the fron- 
tiers of London. On one of these, bound for 
Maida Vale (make you think of Dickens and 
Mr. Vholes?) a knotty handed sailorman with 
half a stew — and a perfect goitre of tobacco 
in his cheek — swung out of a jerry built villa 
and into our bus, with this remark : 
_ "She's a blinl^in' fool, thet's wot she is." 

The bus was fairly filled with women in- 
digenous to that region — the sort that wears silk 
fingerless "mitts" and Victorian side curls. 
Austere women, intensely British lower middle 
class, looking upon the world with cold suspi- 
cion and unchallengeable virtue. On the toes 
of these matrons he stepped without apology 
and made his way to where we sat, proffering 
uninvited information of a family nature : 

"She's a blinkin' fool, my darter is!" 

He leered upon the matrons. 

"Lydies, my darter's lost 'er 'esbun. Dead, 
J e is. An' she sys she'll see 'im agyne. See 'im 
agyne !" (with fine scorn. ) "Ownell is she goin' 
to see 'im agyne? 'E's dead, thet's wot 'e is. 

"Lydies, Hi'm a sylerman. Thet's wot Hi 
am. Syled hall raound the world, Hi 'ave. 



84 Spirit Life 

Hi've seen 'em die hevery wares. Nytives. 
Wyte men. Lascars. Niggers. Hasians, 
Saouth Sea islanders, Howstrylians, Peta- 
gownies, hall over the world. HiVe seen 'em 
die o' fever, an smorl pox, an' heppydemics, an' 
fightin', an' draownin', an' 'angin', an' hevery- 
think. An' do yer think Hill see 'em agyne? 
Not me! They're dead, they are, same as wot 
my darter's 'esbun is — an' she sys she'll see 'im 
agyne! 'Ell!" 

This cheerful declaration evoked sniffs, and 
nothing more. Seeing which, he stepped on all 
their feet on his return trip to the door, de- 
barked, had a tobacco hemorrhage, wiped his 
mouth with the back of his hand, brought up in 
the wind, made a slanting run to a public house 
named The Pig and Hind, and entered there, 
leaving upon the ambience a floating state- 
ment : 

"She's a blinkin' fool, she is. See 'im agyne? 
'Ell!" 

A GHOST THAT PROTESTED 

A. C. Henig, a Chicago man, has built up 
a competence handling real estate. He used 
to live in Toledo, where he was well known. A 
few years back his brother Charles died there. 



Spirit Life 85 

After he had changed to Chicago some of his 
friends who were interested in spiritism tried 
to get his attention, but the subject seemed to 
him trivial. These friends had not gone beyond 
physical phenomena. He had seen Hermann 
and Kellar and Thurston do things quite as 
inexplicable as anything they told him about, 
and he was disinclined to bother himself by try- 
ing to draw a line at which human skill would 
leave off and spiritual phenomena begin — con- 
ceding their possibility, which he declined to do. 

One day at noon he was going up the stairs in 
his own hallway, alone, as he thought. But a 
voice immediately behind him called him by a 
familiar nickname. He turned and there on the 
stair below him stood Charlie, whose body he 
had followed to the grave not long before. The 
appearance spoke to him : 

"How r long are you going to go on before 
you tear the bandage off your eyes and see 
things as they are?" 

It was so sudden and the question so sharp 
that he stood in still surprise a moment. Just 
as he was about to speak his brother's name, 
there was no appearance. It had blinked 
away into the air of that bright noonday, and 
left him dazed. 



86 Spirit Life 

The effect was to start him in a chase for 
Charlie's spook, and this chase led him into 
many places, through experiences of many- 
kinds, and into a discovery of a few things far 
enough beyond the uttermost phenomena to be 
satisfying — at least to him. 

THE GHOST OF MRS. CONWELL 

The Rev. Dr. Russell H. Conwell, who has 
been described as "one of the most venerable 
and prominent figures in the educational and 
religious life of America," was brought to book 
by his rigidly Christian friends for having told 
of an experience repugnant to orthodoxy. He 
had seen "a form which took on the appearance 
of his dead wife." He had the courage to stick 
to the story, even to the length of writing it 
for The Baptist, a sectarian publication. Here 
it is, as it there was printed : 

"I never stated that I saw the spirit of my 
wife. I am not acquainted with a spiritual 
medium and never consulted one. 

"I did not expect to see the matter in any 
newspaper or magazine. I did not dream that 
the public would be interested in such a per- 
sonal incident. Even if I had thought the 
public would care to see it, I would have re- 



Spirit Life 87 

garded it as too sacred a topic to expose to the 
world's criticism. But, as briefly as I can state 
the homely but mysterious facts, I will put 
them down here. 

"Three years after the death of my wife I 
began to see a form sitting on the side of my 
bed, at the foot, every morning when I woke. 
I attributed it to some effect of overwork on my 
eyesight. But after many weeks it grew so 
like my wife that I consulted two physicians, 
who reasonably said that if I would work less 
the vision would disappear. But the figure be- 
came more clear, until her natural smile and her 
voice were distinct. Believing it to be only a 
strange effect of my mental state, I fell in with 
the conditions and amused myself with experi- 
ments to see if I was in any abnormal condition. 
But I seemed healthy in mind and body. I 
regarded it so surely a figment of my mind that 
I laughed at it, and said to the figure, 

" 'I know this is not you. Please let me test 

this; 

"The figure seemed to consent, and in an- 
swer to my question told me where my army 
discharge papers were which had been lost for 
twenty-five years. I went to the place indi- 
cated by the seeming voice conversation and 



88 Spirit Life 

found the box containing the papers behind a 
shelf full of old books. The next morning the 
form was more distinct than ever, and seemed 
to laugh over my discovery. Then I asked if 
she would come again the next morning and let 
me test the matter further. She laughingly 
said she would come once more. 

"Still believing I was playing with an hallu- 
cination, I asked my servant girl to hide the 
gold pen and holder which my wife had pre- 
sented to me, and I emphatically told the girl 
not to give me any hint where she had hidden it. 

"The next morning there again sat the form 
as distinct as often in life my wife had sat there, 
and I arose in bed to look closely, and said, 

" 'Do you know where my gold pen is?' 

"She seemed pleased, as with a joke, and 
answered, 

' 'Of course I know. Get out of bed and I 
will show you where it is.' 

"I arose and followed the form to a clothes 
closet, in which was a shelf for medicine bottles. 
She pointed to the closet, and when I opened 
the door she pointed impatiently to the far end 
of the shelf. I removed the bottles and reached 
far back along the shelf, and my hand fell on 
the penholder. When I took it out and stepped 



Spirit Life 89 

down from the chair I had mounted the figure 
was gone, and it has in no way reappeared. I 
have tried many ways to bring it back to my 
sight, but with no success. 

"Friends give me several solutions of the 
mystery satisfactory to them : 

"1. Some say it was surely the spirt of my 
wife. 

"2. Some say it was a satanic spirit imitating 
my wife. 

"3. Some say it was a case of mental exalta- 
tion, wherein I had unconscious telepathic com- 
munication with the mind of the girl who hid 
the pen. 

"4. Some others say that it was a case of in- 
stinctive 'sense of presence/ which as in chem- 
istry, impressed on my mind the direction and 
presence of the pen I had habitually used. 

"5. For myself I do not feel that the phe- 
nomena are yet explained. While I believe 
fully in the truth of the Bible narrative con- 
cerning the visits of the angels, and that the 
spirits of the dead 'are as the angels of God/ 
yet I do not believe they are subject to the call 
of men on the earth, and I can not admit to 
myself that the form I saw was actually my 
wife. 



90 Spirit Life 

"I will prayerfully and calmly wait for an- 
other appearance, when I will feel the impor- 
tance of making more careful scientific tests." 

THE SPECTRE MONK 

My friend Baer, a feature man on the old 
Inter Ocean newspaper in Chicago, had occa- 
sion to visit his uncle in the west of England, 
and brought home a memory that haunted him. 
The uncle's house had been part of a monastic 
establishment dating back to Edward II. At 
one side its windows gave on a ruined wall, 
with a space between concerning which there 
were vague and varying legends of treasure 
buried by the monks in some flurry of those 
faraway days when the barons used to flutter 
abbots who had grown rich enough to be worth 
shaking down. A detached incident involved 
the fate of one lone monk who had sought to 
annex part of this sunken fund and was over- 
taken in the act by a countryman who slew him 
and shouldered the treasure-bag and himself 
was almost immediately stricken by lightning 
from a presumably indignant heaven. The 
legend ran that once a year that unhappy coun- 
tryman must return from whatever dominion 



Spirit Life 91 

of ghostland he inhabited, and in simulacrum 
briefly resume the burden of the bag so wick- 
edly acquired in his days of nature, only to be 
so suddenly smitten out. 

Of this tradition Baer never had heard. He 
was born in America, and his father had not 
told it to him. But in the early dawnlight of a 
morning when he was to "go out with the guns'' 
and his cousins, he was cracking a breakfast 
egg y sitting by himself, in a room looking to 
the ruined wall; and past the window moved a 
strange figure, that stooped, and raised up 
again swinging a heavy bag across one shoul- 
der, then slowly went away in the direction 
whence he came. 

It was such a strange figure of a man — in a 
quaint cap, a smock, and tapelike strips around 
his lower legs, that Baer got up and leaned out 
of the window, and saw him not more than a 
dozen feet away, then saw him not at all, for he 
went out like a figure of mist smitten by wind 
— vanished, bag and all, in midstep ; and a rush 
of cold air smote Baer in the face so that he 
drew in his head and closed the window. 

To his uncle who came in shortly he told this 
queer thing, and asked if he knew who that old 
fellow was. His uncle looked up the date. 



92 Spirit Life 

"So you Ve seen it," he commented, and told 
the story of the sacrilegious countryman. "It 
is a belief of the countryside that on the morn- 
ing of this day every year the poor old codger 
has to come back and go through that same 
performance — for his sins, I suppose, though 
it would look to me that he must nearly have 
done by this time, it happened so long ago, if 
it happened at alL" 

"I've never seen it myself," he added, "but 
I've heard of it ever since I was a boy. There 
are touches like that in the history of nearly 
every old house in the realm." And he let it go 
at that. 

THE INDIGNANT GHOST 

Sir Alfred Turner lived not far from Cheyne 
Walk in Chelsea, where Thomas Carlyle passed 
his later years. He used to tell a story that 
goes very well with Baer's, about a ghostly 
monk: 

"The people who once owned the house were 
friends of mine. One evening they asked me 
to come to dine with them. 

"Inside the building there were some curious 
winding stairs. As I was going from the hall 
from the dining room I saw the figure of a 



Spirit Life 93 

monk in a brown robe going up the main stair- 
way. The people of the house being Roman 
Catholics, I took him for a guest like myself. 
When my host and hostess were sitting down to 
dinner, I asked them, 

" 'Where is the priest?' 

"They looked askance, and asked in return, 
1 What priest?' 

"When I told them what I had seen, they 
said there was no such person in the house. 
Further inquiry brought out curious informa- 
tion. The figure I had seen was believed to be 
the ghost of a father confessor to a family who 
had owned the place many years ago. The 
house stood where a monastery had stood in the 
old days. My friends who owned it are dead 
now, and two or three tenants have since lived 
in it. It had the reputation of being haunted in 
a harmless way. 

"We held a seance there one evening, with an 
episode of ghostly comedy. 

"It is said, and I incline to think it is true, 
that sometimes a particularly hard-headed, 
stubborn man persists in believing he is still a 
live man, though his body be dead and buried 
long ago. A former tenant would seem to have 
been such an one. He was absolutely unaware 



94 Spirit Life 

he had passed over, and went so far as to be 
extremely nasty about our being in his house. 

"'What" are you doing here?' he asked. 
'Why is the Duke of Westminster here? Why 
are you sitting about the place in the dark?' 

"The duke was not present, but a relation of 
his was. 

"We tried to convince the old boy that he 
himself had been on the other side upward of a 
hundred years, but he wouldn't hear of it. He 
gave us his name and told us we would hear 
from his solicitor, giving the name and a num- 
ber in Leadenhall street. The solicitor would 
give us what for, we might be sure of that. 

"We thought it worth while to look the old 
fellow up. We found the solicitor's great- 
grandson established in Leadenhall street at 
the address given by the ghost, and verified the 
ghost's identity and the time when the grumpy 
old fellow who owned it had died." 

A GHOST OF TRAGIC MEMORY 

I don't know whether the Booth incident 
really belongs in any category of apparitions, 
but it was near enough to qualify in this place. 

Edwin Booth's wife was the daughter of 
Mrs. McVicker. The name of his brother^ 



Spirit Life 95 

John Wilkes Booth, has a sinister place in our 
national history. Its unhappy owner, a great 
but uneven actor, had often played in Mr. Mc- 
Vicker's theatre. 

At the dark seance of which I have already 
spoken, I sat at Mrs. McVicker's right. One of 
the balls of lambent vapor that moved within 
the circle settled before her face, not more than 
two feet away, and I saw it gradually unfold 
— as I can best describe what I saw — and a face 
in profile to me took form. Mrs. McVicker 
gave a sudden start and a frightened exclama- 
tion. The lips of the face moved as in speech, 
but I could not hear what it said. After that it 
clouded, and disappeared. 

After the seance I asked Mrs. McVicker 
whose face it was and what it had said. 

"It was John Wilkes Booth," she answered, 
"and all it said was, 'Don't be frightened. I've 
only come to show myself.' " 

THE BANSHEE OF THE O'NEILLS 

My mother was an intensely religious 
woman, almost painfully conscientious — 
valiant for truth in a degree that wrought 
trouble upon us children for even those harm- 
less flights of imagination in which all normal 



96 Spirit Life 

children exercise their minds. Yet she told 
me (and upon urgent request, several times) 
that she had once seen the Banshee of the 
O'Neills. 

The seat of the O'Neills in the north of Ire- 
land is Shane's Castle, on an island or near- 
island in Lough Neagh, County Antrim. 
Here, when she was eighteen or thereabout, she 
was one of a house party, a guest of the O'Neill 
daughters. Her window overlooked the lake. 

One midnight she was awakened by a long- 
drawn, wailing cry, and saw before her window 
the air-borne figure of a young woman draped 
in black, with long black hair streaming over 
her shoulders. The face was upturned and she 
was wringing her hands ; and as she passed, she 
cried again the same heartrending cry — and 
passed up from sight. 

My mother was frightened. She wakened 
the family and told what she had seen. 

"God help us!" said the O'Neill. "She has 
seen the Banshee of the O'Neills." He looked 
at his daughters. " Which will it be?" 

The tradition was that the appearance of this 
discomforting attache of the O'Neills invari- 
ably was followed by a death in the family. 



Spirit Life 97 

Sure enough (as they say in Ireland), one of 
the young ladies died within a week. 

LADY FANSHAWE SEES A BANSHEE 

Of the banshee as a forerunner of death in 
certain families of Ireland, Sir Walter Scott, 
in a note accompanying his poem "The Lady of 
the Lake," takes this story from the manuscript 
memoirs of Lady Fanshawe : 

"During their stay in Ireland, Lady Fan- 
shawe and Sir Richard, her husband, visited the 
head of a renowned sept, who lived in an old 
baronial castle surrounded by a moat. One 
night Lady Fanshawe was awakened by a shrill 
scream, and looking out of her bed beheld by the 
moonlight a female face and part of a human 
form hovering at the window. The face was 
that of a young and rather handsome woman, 
though deadly pale ; and the hair, which was of 
beautiful auburn, was loose and disheveled. 
The dress, which Lady Fanshawe, notwith- 
standing her terror, accurately noticed, was that 
of the ancient Irish. The apparition continued 
in the same position for some time; and then, 
after uttering two shrill shrieks, suddenly van- 
ished. 



98 Spirit Life 

"In the morning Lady Fanshawe communi- 
cated to her host what she had witnessed during 
the night, and found him not only prepared to 
credit, but to explain its meaning. 

" 'A near relation of mine,' he said, 'expired 
last night in this castle. We concealed our ex- 
pectation of this event from you, lest it should 
throw a gloom over the reception we desired to 
give you, and which was your due. Now, be- 
fore such an event in this family or this castle, 
the female apparition, or Banshee, whom you 
have seen, is always visible. She is believed to 
be the ghost of a woman of inferior rank whom 
one of my ancestors degraded himself by mar- 
rying, and whom afterward, to expiate the dis- 
honor done to his family, he caused to be 
drowned in the castle moat.' " 

It is worth noticing, and to the credit of the 
ancient and lofty house of O'Neill, that no such 
post mortem scandal as that was kept going by 
the unhappy Banshee my mother saw at 
Shane's Castle. 

THE BERESFORD GHOST 

Ireland has been fruitful of history, legend, 
song and story — more fruitful than any other 
land in tales of faery, of mystic beauty, of grue- 



Spirit Life 99 

some fear, of heroism, of exaltation and of 
doom. Out of many memories, one stands 
clearest to me as being well attested, in which 
two states of life are blended in a perfect spir- 
itual fabric, It is known as the story of "the 
Beresford ghost." 

The Beresfords went to Ireland in the reign 
of James I. When the things occurred in which 
the ghost is concerned, Sir Tristram and Lady 
Beresford had for their residence Lexlip Castle 
on the River Liffey, about ten miles out of 
Dublin and not far from Maynooth. The seat 
of the Tyrone was near by, and the two fami- 
lies were on terms of close friendship. The 
Earl of Tyrone was a bachelor. 

The Reverend Bourchier Wrey Savile, rec- 
tor of Shillingford parish in Devon, briefs the 
introductory passage of the story thus : 

"One morning the Lady Beresford appeared 
at the breakfast table deadly pale, with evident 
tokens of something having happened in the 
night. Her husband noticed a black ribbon 
round her wrist, and asked whether the wrist 
had been hurt. She said no, but told him she 
wished he would never ask her reason for wear- 
ing the ribbon. 



100 Spirit Life 

'You will never more see me without it," 
she said. "I would not for a moment conceal 
anything from you that concerned you as a 
husband to know. I never in my life refused 
you anything you requested, but of this I must 
entreat you to forgive my refusal, and never 
again to mention the subject." 

A little later in the day word came that Lord 
Tyrone had died suddenly, in the night. Not 
long after, Lady Beresford's son Marcus was 
born. Seven years later, Lord Beresford died. 
Lady Beresford married again. 

Years passed, until Lady Beresford's forty- 
seventh birthday drew near. There was a 
prophecy of her death on that anniversary. On 
it she died, but in expectation of death, she had 
written the whole story, to be read by her son 
and by an old and intimate friend. As handed 
down, it runs : 

"My dear son, and you, my beloved friend 
whom I have so long known, I have something 
of the greatest importance to communicate to 
you before I die, a period which is not far dis- 
tant. You know the terms of friendship which 
existed between the late Earl of Tyrone and 
myself; how we were thrown much together 
when orphans, possessing the same guardian, 



Spirit Life 10 1 

who unhappily endeavored to imbue us with 
his own principles of religious infidelity, in 
which, alas, he met with too great success. 
After many years of skepticism and doubt, we 
made a mutual agreement that whoever should 
die first would, if permitted by the Almighty, 
appear to the other and testify to the truth or 
falsity of revealed religion. 

"Accordingly, one night I awoke suddenly 
from a sound sleep, and found to my horror 
Lord Tyrone sitting by my bedside. I 
screamed out, 

" Tor heaven's sake, Lord Tyrone, what 
brings you here at this time of night?' 

' 'Have you then forgotten our promise?' 
said he, in a manner of awful solemnity. 'Did 
we not mutually engage to appear to each other 
after death ? I have just quitted the world, 
and am now permitted to appear to you for 
the purpose of assuring you of the truth of 
revealed religion, and that it is the only one by 
which we can be saved. I am further suffered 
to inf oral you that you will in due time give 
birth to a son, that you will become a widow and 
marry again, and that you will die on your 
forty-seventh birthday.' 



102 Spirit Life 

" 'Good heaven!' cried I, 'can not I prevent 
this?' 

'Yes/ he replied, 'you are a free agent, and 
can prevent it by abstaining from a second mar- 
riage. Hitherto you have had no trials. More 
I am not permitted to tell you, but if after this 
warning you persist in infidelity as regards reli- 
gion, your lot in another world will be most 
miserable.' 

" 'May I not ask,' said I, 'if you are happy?' 
'Had I been otherwise,' said he, 'I would 
not have been allowed to appear to you.' 

'May I then infer that you are happy V He 
smiled. 

'But how?' said I, 'when the morning comes, 
shall I know that your appearance before me 
has been real, and not the mere phantom of a 
dream?' 

" 'Will not the news of my death convince 
you?' 

'No,' I replied, 'I might have had such a 
dream, and that dream might accidentally be- 
come true. I wish for some stronger proof of 
its reality.' 

'You shall have it,' said he; then waving his 
hand, the crimson velvet bed-curtains were 



Spirit Life 103 

instantly drawn through a large iron hoop by 
which the tester of the bed was suspended. 'In 
that you cannot be mistaken; no mortal arm 
could have performed this.' 

" 'True/ I replied, 'but asleep we sometimes 
possess much greater strength than awake. 
Although I could not have done this when 
awake, I might have done it in my sleep, and I 
still have doubt.' 

"He then proceeded to write his name in my 
pocketbook, which was lying on my table, re- 
marking, 'You know my handwriting/ 

'Nevertheless/ I said, 'though I could not 
imitate your handwriting when awake, I might 
do so in my sleep/ 

'You are hard of belief indeed. I must not 
touch you ; it would injure you irreparably. It 
is not for spiritual bodies to touch mortal flesh/ 

'I do not regard a small blemish/ said I. 

" 'You are a courageous woman/ said he. 
'Then hold out your hand/ 

"He touched my wrist. His hand was cold 
as ice! In an instant eveiy sinew and nerve 
shrunk, leaving an indelible mark as if a pair of 
hot pincers had gripped me, 



104 Spirit Life 

" 'Now/ said he, 'let no mortal eye while you 
live behold that wrist ; to see it would be sacri- 
lege/ 

"He rose from his seat, walked a few steps 
from the bed, and laid his hand on a bureau 
which always stood in the room. 

" 'In the morning,' he added, 'when you be- 
hold this, you will find another proof that what 
you have seen and heard this night is not an idle 
dream, or the mere fancy of your brain.' 

"He stopped— I turned to look at him again 
— he was gone. 

"During the time I had conversed with him, 
my thoughts were perfectly calm and collected, 
but the moment he had departed I felt chilled 
with terror, a cold perspiration came ever me. 
In this state of terror and agitation I lay for 
some time, until a flood of tears came to my 
relief, and I dropped asleep. 

"In the morning when I awaked I found Sir 
Tristram had got up without noticing anything 
that had happened during the night. On ris- 
ing, I found my pocketbook lying in its usual 
place, with some pencil marks inside which I 
knew at once to be in the handwriting of Lord 
Tyrone. I took a piece of black ribbon and 
bound it tightly round my wrist, which pre- 



Spirit Life 105 

sented the appearance of having been scarred 
and burnt during the night ; and then, turning 
to the bureau, I observed the impression of a 
man's hand deeply burnt into the lid. 

"I was overcome with agitation, and on de- 
scending to breakfast the horrors of the night 
had left such tokens on my countenance that my 
husband naturally inquired after my health and 
what had happened to distress me so much. 

" Quieting him as well as I could, I informed 
him of these two events: First, that Lord 
Tyrone had died on the preceding night; and 
that in due time I would give birth to a son. Sir 
Tristram kindly desisted from any further 
importunities. A few hours later proved the 
truth of the information regarding Lord 
Tyrone's death by a dispatch from his steward 
confirming the painful news; and several 
months after this you, my son, were born, to 
the great joy of your father as well as myself. 

"I pass over the intervening twenty years 
between that night and the present time. 
Mindful of what the apparition had predicted 
respecting my death on my forty-seventh birth- 
day, I hoped he was mistaken, believing that 
had passed a year ago ; I therefore determined 
to celebrate my forty-eighth birthday, as I 



io6 Spirit Life 

thought, in the way we have been doing today. 
The information I have just learned from an 
authority which I cannot doubt tells me I was 
mistaken, and convinces me that I have only 
a few hours to live. But I bless God that death 
has now no terrors for me. I have learnt the 
truth of revealed religion, and trusting solely to 
the death and merits of my Savior for my hopes 
of happiness hereafter, I can depart in peace. 
When I am dead, as concealment is no longer 
necessary, I request that you, my beloved 
friend, will unbind my wrist, take from it the 
black ribband, and let my son behold it with 
yourself." 

Lady Beresf ord then expressed a wish to be 
alone, with the intention of endeavoring to 
compose herself to sleep. Sir Marcus (her 
son) immediately quitted the room, and called 
his mother's attendants, having desired them to 
w r atch their mistress attentively, and should 
they observe any change in her, to call them 
instantly. 

An hour passed. They listened at the door, 
but no sound was heard. Then a bell rang, 
violently. They flew to her apartment, and 
as they went, they heard the servants crying 
out: 



Spirit Life 107 

"O, she is dead! The mistress is dead!" 
Young Sir Marcus and his mother's friend 
sent them out of the room, and proceeded to 
carry out Lady Beresford's dying request. 
They lifted her hand, loosed the ribbon, and 
found the wrist in exactly the condition she had 
described, every nerve withered, and the sinews 
shrunken. 

"Such/' says the reverend chronicler, "is the 
story which has been preserved in the family. 
The bureau which was in Lady Beresford's 
room on that memorable night of the apparition 
still is there ; and I have now before me a letter 
written by a lady connected with the family, 
who remarks, 'Colonel Blackler told me he had 
often seen the chest of drawers with the mark 
of a hand on it, which was attributed to the 
ghost having touched it.' " 

"the veil of disembodied spirits" 

The same Reverend Bourchier Wrey Savile 
put of record a few other cases of apparitions, 
some drawn from holy writ, some experienced 
by himself, some so attested as to leave in his 
mind no room for any question of verity. 

"Concerningthe innumerable instances of ap- 
paritions of departed persons revealing them- 



io8 Spirit Life 

selves to those on earth," he says, "I would ask 
if it is not possible to conceive that at the con- 
vulsive moment which separates soul and body, 
there may be evolved a transient condition of 
being, entirely separate from spirit, soul, and 
body in its present state ? It may be regarded 
as the veil of the disembodied spirit — a species 
of vaporous essence, invisible in its normal state, 
but during the brief space of its new condition, 
exercising some of the properties of matter. 

"If it be objected that this essence is in a 
form so subtle as to be incapable of acting on 
matter, or of affecting the eye or ear, we can 
point to the most subtle and invisible of fluids, 
like electricity, from which, as science teaches, 
the most powerful agents are obtained. It is 
not a little remarkable that the profound con- 
templations of Sir Isaac Newton, as set forth 
in his work on Optics, should have led him to 
the following inquiries: 

" 'Is not heat conveyed through a vacuum by 
the vibrations of a much more subtle medium 
than air? Is not this medium the same by 
which light is refracted, and communicates heat 
to bodies, and is put into fits of easy transmis- 
sion and reflection? Do not hot bodies commu- 
nicate their heat to cold ones by the vibration 



Spirit Life 109 

of this medium? And is it not more rare and 
subtle than the air, and exceedingly more elas- 
tic and active ? And does it not readily pervade 
all bodies? And is it not by its elastic force 
expanded through all the heavens?' 

"All these questions were in a measure an- 
swered by Sir Humphrey Davy, when consid- 
ering heat in referring to motion, he pointed 
out that it seems possible to account for all the 
phenomena of heat, if it be supposed that in 
solids the particles are in a state of vibration, 
those of the hottest bodies moving with the 
greatest velocity ; and that in liquid and elastic 
fluids, besides the vibratory motion, the par- 
ticles move round their own axes with different 
velocities. 

"This refers to three states of matter — the 
solid, the fluid, the gaseous or aeriform ; but 
when heat becomes radiant we can only explain 
its complete analogy to light by supposing that 
motion is communicated to the particles of a 
luminiferous ether." 

These comparatively ancient explanations 
would, upon consideration, seem to anticipate 
in part and in part be negative to Einstein's 
somewhat cryptic declaration of etheral sub- 
stance. But the latest edition of Webster's 



1 1 o Spirit Life 

Dictionary dismisses ether as a known element 
in nature, "supposed to fill all known space, 
even those portions occupied by fluids and 
solids"; and Webster is ultimate authority in 
the meaning of words. 

"If then," proceeds our reverend Wrey Sa- 
vile, "we admit the possibility of the existence 
of such a transition state in the condition of 
'body, soul and spirit,' the supernatural fea- 
tures would be referable to the circumstance 
that the spirit, as the surviving and superior 
essence accomplishing what was impossible 
while wholly clad in its fleshly garment, might 
annihilate time and space and in the image and 
reflection of the form from which it has hardly 
escaped, be itself the bearer of the tidings of 
its own dissolution. Who can say but that 
these mysterious visitations, instead of being 
as some allege the suspension or supercession of 
natural laws, may prove to be rather the com- 
plete fulfillment of one of the most beautiful 
and interesting of the marvelous code? ' 

Tennyson puts the same question: 

"Dare I say 
No spirit ever brake the band 
That stays him from his native land 

Where first he walked when clasped in clay? 



Spirit Life ill 

"No visual shade of some one lost 
But he, the spirit himself, may come, 
Where all the nerve of sense is dumb ; 

Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost." 

In one of his "Letters to a Lady" von Hum- 
boldt wrote on this subject: 

"That a beloved friend, in the moment of 
dissolution, may gain power over the elements, 
and in defiance of the laws of nature be able 
to appear to us, would be perfectly incompre- 
hensible if it were not for the half defined feel- 
ing in our hearts that it may be so. It is quite 
probable that a very earnest desire might give 
strength sufficient to break through the laws 
of nature. But there may be needed a pecu- 
liar disposition for the perception of a spirit, 
and we may be often unconsciously in the pres- 
ence of disembodied souls." 

' Often unconsciously?" Yes. But how 
often has the reader of these lines been acutely, 
disquietingly conscious of the presence of a 
definite yet invisible personality, by an impres- 
sion strong enough to push away all else from 
the mind? The visible are dreaded, the invis- 
ible disturb. But the visible are infrequent, 
the invisible are all around us. "Millions of 
unseen creatures walk the earth," intoned our 



1 1 2 Spirit Life 

mighty Milton, "unseen, by day and night, 
whether we wake or sleep." And our gentler 
Longfellow tells us soothingly that 

"All houses wherein men have lived and died 
Are haunted houses. Through the open door 

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide 
With feet that make no sound upon the floor." 

A NATURAL BODY AND SPIRITUAL BODY 

The Reverend Savile in his collection of au- 
thenticated accounts of apparitions makes an 
essay remarkable for its understanding, con- 
sidering the date — 1880, when dogmatic reli- 
gion was vigorously inculcating the doctrine 
of individual immortality and savagely reject- 
ing actual proofs of that same doctrine. "If," 
says he, "as St. Paul teaches in writing to the 
Corinthians, there go to make up as the person- 
ality of man 'a natural body and a spiritual 
body;' if the Bible declares that these coexist, 
while life endures, in each of us; if the same 
apostle intimates that the spiritual body can 
and does detach itself to some extent or other, 
for a time, from the material flesh and blood 
with which it is so closely allied, as he says him- 
self, 'I knew a man in Christ above fourteen 
years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; 
or whether out of the body, I cannot tell ; God 



Spirit Life 113 

knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third 
heaven;' . . . and if death be but the going 
forth of the spiritual body from its temporary 
associate; then at the moment of its exit it is 
that spiritual body, which through life may have 
been occasionally and partially detached from 
the natural body, and which at length is thus 
entirely separated from it and passes into an- 
other state of existence, waiting patiently for 
the morn of resurrection when as the Psalmist 
teaches it will awake from the sleep of the grave 
to be satisfied with the likeness of God ; if then 
Scripture teaches that the spiritual body, while 
still connected with its earthly associate may, in 
certain circumstances, appear distinct from the 
natural body, and perceptible to human vision, 
if not to human touch ; why should not the same 
spiritual bod}^, after its final emancipation from 
the trammels of the flesh, be permitted to ap- 
pear again on earth and show itself to man? 
The improbability arising from the rarity of 
such an occurrence is no disproof of the fact. 
One true and well authenticated report of the 
appearance of a departed person may give rise 
to many false reports of similar incidents ; but 
universal and unconcerted testimony on be- 
half of a 'supernatural' manifestation of the 



114 Spirit Life 

dead cannot always be untrue. Such a prodigy 
is too singular in its nature to become the sub- 
ject of general invention. It will scarcely be 
possible for those v/ho are uninfluenced by pop- 
ular prejudice to believe that apparitions would 
have been vouched for in all countries had they 
never been seen in any. 

THE PERSISTENCE OF SPIRITS 

"No difference in race, religion, language or 
civilization, no argument nor reason, has up- 
rooted from the heart of mankind in general 
this deepseated belief of the occasional appear- 
ance of departed spirits to persons living in the 
'natural' world. The patriarch Job and the 
Roman Brutus professed to have seen spiritual 
beings; and similar manifestations have been 
made to men in every age. The belief in them 
is equally an element in sacred, classical, and 
modern literature. That the spirits of departed 
persons might and occasionally did appear was 
a doctrine held by some of the wisest and most 
devout men that ever existed.' 

"Baxter, in his 'Saint's Everlasting Rest,' 
says : Tor my own part, though I am as sus- 
picious as most in such reports, and do believe 
that most of them are conceits or delusions, yet 



Spirit Life 115 

having been very inquisitive in all such cases, 
I have received undoubted testimony of the 
truth of such apparitions. . . . The writings 
of Gregory, Augustine, Chrysostom, and 
others, make frequent mention of apparitions, 
and relate the several stories at large. . . . 
Lavater, a learned, godly divine, who hath writ- 
ten a book (De Spectris) wholly on appari- 
tions, tells us that it was then an undeniable 
thing, confirmed by the testimonies of many 
credible persons, both men and women, who 
sometimes by night and sometimes by day have 
both seen and heard such things, confessing 
they were the souls of such and such persons 
lately departed.' " 

Addison wrote in The Spectator: "I think a 
person who is terrified with the imagination 
of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable 
than one who, contrary to the report of all 
historians — sacred and profane, ancient and 
modern — and to the traditions of all nations, 
thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and 
groundless. I might add that not only the his- 
torians, to whom we may join the poets, but 
likewise the philosophers of antiquity, have 
favoured this opinion." 



n6 Spirit Life 

Good old Doctor Watts, whose hymns have 
been nasalized by several generations, certainly 
was a godly man, ceaseless in promoting the 
fear of God in some hearts as against the fear 
of hell in all. Doctor Watts wrote a valuable 
essay bearing a title that would push a mod- 
ern headline writer from his stool: "On the 
Proof of a Separate State of Souls between 
Death and the Resurrection." In this airy skit 
he says : 

"I cannot help taking notice that the multi- 
tude of narratives which we have heard of in all 
ages, of the apparitions of the spirits or ghosts 
of persons departed from this life can hardly 
be all delusion and falsehood. Scripture seems 
to mention such sort of ghosts or appearances 
of souls so departed. Matt, xiv, 26 : when the 
disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, 'they 
thought it had been a spirit;' and Luke xxiv, 
37: after His resurrection they saw Him at 
once appearing in the midst of them, and they 
supposed they had seen a spirit; and our Sa- 
viour doth not contradict their notion, but 
agrees with them the supposition of its truth : 
'A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see 
me have.' And in Acts xxiii, 8, the word 
'spirit' seems to signify the apparition of a de- 



Spirit Life 1 17 

parted soul, where it is said, 'The Sadducees say 
there is no resurrection, neither angel nor 
spirit;' and verse 9, 'if a spirit or an angel had 
spoken to this man' ... A spirit here is 
plainly distinct from an angel, and what can it 
mean but an apparition of a human soul which 
has left the body?" 

In the eighteenth century, those great lights 
of our law and literature, Blackstone, Dod- 
dridge, Goldsmith, Johnson, believed they had 
seen apparitions of people they had known in 
the earthly state. In "Rasselas," Johnson 
makes Imlac say: "That the dead are seen no 
more I will not undertake to maintain against 
the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all 
ages and all nations. There is no people, rude 
or learned, among whom apparitions of the 
dead are not related and believed. This opin-> 
ion, which perhaps prevails as far as human 
nature is diffused, could become universal only 
by its truth; those that never heard of another 
world would not have agreed in a tale which 
nothing but experience could have rendered 
credible. That it is doubted by single cavilers 
can very little weaken the general evidence; 
and some who deny it with their tongues confess 
it by their fears." 



1 18 Spirit Life 

Of this consideration Byron stated for at 
least once in his life a serious conclusion: 

"I merely mean to say what Johnson said, 

That in the course of some six thousand years 
All nations have believed that from the dead 

A visitant at intervals appears. 
And what is strangest upon this strange head 

Is, that whatever bar the reason rears 
'Gainst such belief, there's something stranger still 

In its behalf, let those deny who will." 

THE FAMOUS WYNYARD GHOST 

The Wynyard ghost is probably the most 
voluminously attested of all apparitions — and 
the most persistent, for though it manifested 
over a hundred years ago, still it walks. Walks, 
but never talks. 

The story amounts to a tradition in the Brit- 
ish army. It was first told to me by a British 
officer in Montreal, then again and in terms 
almost identical by Major English of the 14th 
Hussars, at the United Service Club, in 
London. Later I found it in a book of 
choice horrors in one of those rare book shops 
that used to make High Holborn so interesting. 
I bought the book, and from it copy here and 
thus : 



Spirit Life 119 

On the 15th of October, 1785, about 4 p. m., 
and therefore in broad daylight, two young 
officers of the 83rd regiment of the line were 
sitting together engaged in study in a room 
belonging to a block house at Sydney, in the 
island of Cape Breton, which formed the usual 
quarters of officers whose regiments were serv- 
ing in Canada. The room in question had two 
doors, one opening on an outer passage, the 
other into a bedroom, from which there was no 
exit except through the sitting room. 

These officers, who became distinguished in 
their profession, were subsequently known as 
Sir John Sherbroke and General Wynyard. 

As they were pursuing their studies, Sher- 
brooke, happening to look up from the book 
he was reading, saw beside the door, which 
opened on the passage, the figure of a tall 
youth, of about twenty years of agte, whose 
appearance was that of extreme emaciation. 
Astonished at the presence of a stranger, espe- 
cially as the figure appeared clad in a light 
indoor costume, while they wore furs and wraps 
owing to the severity of the weather, Sherbroke 
called the attention of his companion to their 
unexpected visitor. 



120 Spirit Life 

"I have often heard/' he was wont to say 
when subsequently relating the incident, "of a 
man being as pale as death, but I never saw a 
living face assume the appearance of a corpse 
as Wynyard's did at that moment." 

Both the officers remained silently gazing at 
the figure as it slowly passed through the room, 
and entered the bed-chamber, casting on young 
Wynyard, as Sherbroke thought, a look of 
intense melancholy affection. The oppression 
of its presence was no sooner removed than 
Wynyard, grasping his friend's arm, exclaimed 
in a whisper, 

"Why, good God, that's my brother!" 

'Your brother!" replied Sherbroke, know- 
ing that the brother was then in England, 
"what can you mean? There must be some 
deception in this." 

And with that he instantly rushed into the 
bedroom, followed by his friend. Not a soul 
was there ! They searched in every part, until 
thoroughly convinced that the room was un- 
tenanted. Wynyard persisted in declaring that 
he had seen the apparition of his brother, while 
Sherbroke was inclined to regard it as a delu- 
sion, or probably a trick played by their brother 
officers. 



Spirit Life 121 

They took note of the day and hour in which 
the event had happened, but they resolved not 
to mention the occurrence in the regiment, and 
gradually they persuaded each other that they 
had been the subject of some unaccountable 
delusion. Nevertheless they waited with great 
anxiety for letters from England, communica- 
tion between the two countries being very dif- 
ferent, both as regards speed and regularity, 
from what it is now. Consequently they had to 
wait for a considerable length of time, during 
which the anxiety of Wynyard became so ap- 
parent and distressing that his brother officers, 
in spite of his resolution to the contrary, finally 
won from him the confession of what he had 
seen. 

The story was quickly bruited abroad, and 
naturally produced great excitement through- 
out the regiment. When the long expected mail 
at length arrived, there were no letters for 
Wynyard, but one for Sherbroke. As soon as 
he had opened the packet, he beckoned his 
friend from the room. Expectation was at its 
climax during the hour in which the two friends 
remained closeted together. On their return to 
the mess room the mystery was solved. The 



122 Spirit Life 

letter for Sherbroke was from a brother officer 
in England, the first line of which read thus : 

"Dear John, break to your friend Wynyard 
the death of his favorite brother." 

He had suddenly expired on the very day, 
and making due allowance for difference of 
latitude, at the very time at which the friends 
saw the apparition in Canada. 

Although it might be supposed that this 
solemn event would have been sufficient to con- 
vince Sherbroke of its truth, his mind was so 
strongly prepossessed against the possibility of 
any supernatural intercourse with the dead, 
that he still entertained a doubt of the report 
of his senses, supported as their testimony was 
by the coincidence of a vision and a fact. Some 
years after, however, Sherbroke had a singular 
confirmation of its truth. Walking one day 
down Piccadilly, he saw on the opposite side of 
the street a gentleman whom he instantly recog- 
nized as the exact counterpart of the mysterious 
apparition which had been seen in Canada. 
Crossing over the way he accosted the stranger, 
and after apologizing for the intrusion learned 
that he was a Mr. Hayman, who was noted for 
his resemblance to the deceased officer, John 
Wynyard, and who affected to dress like him, 



Spirit Life 123 

The truth of this marvelous tale, of so un- 
usual a character compared with ordinary 
ghost stories from the fact that the apparition 
was seen by two persons in broad daylight, one 
of whom had never seen the deceased party in 
his life, has been confirmed by a great number 
of persons who have investigated the matter. 

Some years ago Sir John Harvey, Adju- 
tant General of the Forces in Canada, for- 
warded a series of questions to Colonel Gore, 
of the same garrison, who was in the regiment 
with Sherbroke and Wynyard at the time of 
its occurrence, to which he replied as follows: 
That he was present at Sydney when the inci- 
dent happened. It was at the then new barrack, 
which w r as so blocked up with ice as to have no 
communication with any other part of the 
world. He was one of the first persons who 
entered the room after the apparition had 
passed through, and as he says "went into J. 
Wynyard's bedroom, the window of which was 
puttied down." The next day he suggested to 
Sherbroke the propriety of making a careful 
memorandum of every particular connected 
with the incident, which was then done. Col- 
onel Gore adds: "I remember on the 6th of 
June our first letters from England brought 



124 Spirit Life 

the news of John Wynyard's death, which had 
happened on the very night they saw his ap- 
parition." 

Captain Henry Scott, R. N., who was Assis- 
tant Surveyor of Nova Scotia when Sir John 
Sherbroke was governor of that province, used 
to relate, when residing at Blackheath, that on 
one occasion at a state dinner party at the gov- 
ernor's table, a guest happened to remark that 
a newspaper just received from England con- 
tained a most extraordinary ghost story, in 
which his excellency's name appeared. Where- 
upon Sir John Sherbroke, with much emotion, 
quickly replied, 

"I earnestly beg that the subject may not be 
again mentioned." 

The impression on the minds of the company 
being that he considered the matter too awful 
to be talked about on such an occasion. 

Captain Harvey Scott subsequently wrote 
to Robert Dale Owen, then United States Am- 
bassador at the court of Naples, the following 
account of what he had heard on the subject: 
"About six years ago, dining alone with my 
dear friend, now gone to his account, General 
Paul Anderson, C. B., I related to him the 
story of Wynyard's apparition, in substance 



Spirit Life 125 

exactly as you have it. When I had finished, 
'It is extraordinary enough/ said he, 'that you 
have related the story almost verbatim as I 
heard it from Sir John Sherbroke's own lips 
a short time before his death.' (May, 1830.) 
I asked the General whether Sir John ex- 
pressed any opinion about the incident. 'Yes/ 
he replied, 'he assured me in the most solemn 
manner that he believed the appearance to 
have been a ghost or spirit; and added that this 
belief was shared by his friend Wynyard.' 
General Anderson was a distinguished Penin- 
sular war officer, a major under Sir John 
Moore, and one of those who assisted to bury 
that gallant general. 

"I would only add that this remarkable story, 
which has been investigated by so many per- 
sons, affords as clear an instance of the truth of 
an apparition of the dead as it is possible for 
the mind to conceive." 

THE GHOST THAT KILLED MARSHAL 
BLUCHER 

For grisly realism, the story of the German 
Marshal Bliicher is about the strongest speci- 
men to be found in all the literature of appari- 



126 Spirit Life 

tions. Lady Clementina Davies gives it in her 
' 'Recollections" as having been confirmed by 
other officers, and by the King of Prussia, great- 
grandfather of the recently deflated German 
emperor: 

In the autumn of the year in which Waterloo 
had been fought, Marshal Blucher quitted 
France for the last time. Chagrined at finding 
himself reduced to a life of inaction, he retired 
to his property, and fell into a state of melan- 
choly, increased by an attack of dropsy on the 
chest. From this time a change came over his 
character ; the rough and ready soldier became 
timid, and even nervous. He would not remain 
in the dark; solitude was agonizing, and such 
was the uneasiness caused by his failing health, 
that the King of Prussia started for Krieb- 
lowitz as soon as he learned that his old and 
favorite general had several times expressed a 
wish to see him before dying. The king arrived 
in the evening at the castle, and was instantly 
conducted to Blucher, then in his seventy-fourth 
year. 

On seeing the king, Marshal Blucher tried 
to rise for the purpose of receiving his majesty, 
who kindly prevented him, and sat down by 



Spirit Life 127 

his side ; when the old soldier, after dismissing 
his attendants, spoke as follows : 

"Sire, I entreated you to come here, as I 
heard you were in the neighborhood, yet had 
you been at the other extremity of Europe, 
dying as I now am, I must have endeavored 
to reach you, for I have a terrible secret to 
reveal. Sire, be pleased to look at me well, and 
assure yourself that Lam now in the full en- 
joyment of my reason, and that I am not mad ; 
for at times, I almost think I am deluded into 
mistaking recollections of past events for 
visions of the present. 

"When, Sire, in 1756 the seven-years' war 
broke out, my father, who lived on his estate 
of Gross Renson, sent me to one of our rela- 
tions, the Princess Kranswick, in the Isle of 
Rugen. I was then fourteen, and after a time 
passed in the old fortress without news from 
my family, I entered a regiment of hussars in 
the Swedish service, and being taken prisoner 
at Suokow, the Prussian government pressed 
me to take service in its army. For a year I 
resisted, and only obtained my liberty by ac- 
cepting the rank of cornet in the regiment of 
Black Hussars. I then obtained leave for some 
months, as I was very anxious concerning my 



128 Spirit Life 

mother and sisters, and started at once for 
Gross Renson, which had been the scene of war 
during my year's imprisonment. 

"It is just fifty-nine years ago, this very day, 
the 12th day of August" (1816) , "and verging 
toward midnight, when in the midst of a raging 
storm, and after long wandering in the forest, 
I reached my father's house, drenched to the 
skin and alone, for my servant, bewildered by 
the tempest, had lost me in the dark. Without 
dismounting, I struck the nail-studded oaken 
door with the butt end of my whip. No one 
replied, though I hammered again and again 
at the door; until losing patience I jumped off 
my horse, when the door appeared to open of its 
own accord, as I could perceive no one, and I 
entered; and hurrying up the steps went in. 

"There was no light to be seen or sound heard. 
I confess that my heart sank within me, and a 
cold shudder ran through my veins. 'What 
folly!' I exclaimed; 'the house must be empty; 
my family must have left when I quitted it, and 
have not returned, still I must remain for the 
night.' I reached my father's bedroom ; a faint 
and fitful flame threw a dim light upon a group 
of persons seated, among whom I recognized 
my father, mother, and four sisters, who rose on 



Spirit Life 129 

seeing me enter. I was about to throw myself 
into my father's arms, when he arrested me by 
a solemn gesture. I held out my arms to my 
mother, but she retreated with a mournful air. 
I called out to my sisters, who taking each other 
by the hand, again seated themselves. 

" 'Do vou not know me?' I cried. 'Is it thus 
you receive me after so long a separation? Do 
you not know that I am now serving Prussia? 
I was compelled to make the sacrifice in order 
to regain my liberty, and to see you. My 
mother, you are silent. My sisters, have you 
forgotten the love of our childhood, and the 
games of which these walls have been the silent 
witnesses?' 

"At these last words, my sisters seemed to be 
moved, and they spoke to one another in low 
voices ; they rose up and signalled to me to ap- 
proach. One of them then knelt down before 
my mother, and hid her face in her lap as if 
she wished to play at a game called hot-kok- 
hiry, a childish game, where one has his eyes 
bound, and guesses who strikes with the flat of 
the hand. Surprised at this strange freak at 
such a solemn time, I nevertheless touched my 
sister's hand with the whip I still grasped, as a 
mysterious force seemed to impel me so to do. 



130 Spirit Life 

Then came my turn to kneel before my mother, 
and to hide my face in her lap. 

"0 horror ! I felt through her silk dress a cold 
and angular form; I heard a sound of rattling 
bones ; and when a hand was placed in mine, the 
hand remained there ; and it was the hand of a 
skeleton. I arose with a cry of terror ; all had 
disappeared, and there only was left of this 
dreadful vision the human remains which I con- 
vulsively grasped. 

"Almost beside myself, I ran from the cham- 
ber, hurried downstairs, jumped on my horse, 
and galloped wildly through the forest. At 
daybreak my horse sank beneath me and died. 
I fell insensible at the foot of a huge tree, and 
was found there by my attendants with my skull 
fractured. I almost died from the combined 
effects of horror of mind and the injury in my 
head, and it was only after some weeks of fever 
and delirium that I regained my senses, and 
gradually recovered. 

"It was then I learned that all my family had 
perished in the terrible war which had desolated 
Mecklenburg, and that my father's castle had 
been several times pillaged and sacked. 
Scarcely convalescent, I hastened to the castle 



Spirit Life 131 

to render the last rites to my deceased parents 
and sisters ; but after a most rigorous search no 
trace of their remains could be found, save one 
hand only. A female hand surrounded by a 
golden bracelet, lay on the floor of the room in 
which I had seen the apparition. I took the 
golden chain — the same, your majesty, which 
I hold now in my hands — and deposited the 
hand, all that remained of my family, in the 
oratory chapel. ( 

"Many years have glided by since that awful 
scene which I witnessed in my father's castle; 
and it was only two months ago, while lying in 
this arm-chair, a slight noise awoke me. I 
looked up. There stood my father, mother, and 
four sisters, just as they appeared on that awful 
night at the castle of Gross Renson. My sisters 
began playing at the same game, and signaled 
me to advance. 'Never! Never!' I exclaimed; 
and then the apparitions, joining hands, passed 
slowly around my chair. 

" 'Justice!' cried my father, as he passed be- 
fore me ; 

" 'Penitence !' exclaimed my mother, leaning 
toward me; 

Prayer!' murmured my youngest sister. 



a i 



132 Spirit Life 

" 'The sword!' sighed another. 

" 'The 12th of August, at midnight!' whis- 
pered the eldest. 

"Again the procession moved slowly around 
me thrice ; then, with one awful voice, they all 
cried out together. 

" ' Aieu ! adieu ! To our next meeting !' 

"I felt then it was a warning of my ap- 
proaching death, and that I had only to look to 
God to receive my soul, and bid farewell to 
your majesty and my friends!" 

"My dear marshal !" said the king, "what you 
have related to me is very strange ; still do not 
you think the vision may have been caused by 
delirium? Take courage, strive against these 
hallucinations, and you will rally and live many 
years yet. Will you not try and believe what I 
say? Give me your hand." 

The king received no answer. He took the 
old man's hand. It was icy cold. Just then a 
bell sounded the midnight hour. The spirit of 
Marshal Bliicher had quietly passed away. 

THE GHOSTS OF HOLY WRIT 

The Bible abounds in stories about appari- 
tions, beginning as early as the eighteenth 
chapter of Genesis with three angels making 



Spirit Life 133 

an afternoon call on Abraham previous to look- 
ing in on Lot, to whom they passed a suggestion 
that he "be not forgetful to entertain strangers, 
for thereby some have entertained angels un- 
aware." 

Then there were the angels who met Jacob 
on his way home from Pandanaram, and the 
angel he met at Panill and engaged in a catch- 
as-catch-can that lasted all day. And the burn- 
ing bush, which was in another order of simu- 
lacra, not to be approached with shod feet — a 
phenomenon of significance not rightfully per- 
ceived until Mrs. Browning wrote that 

"Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God, 
And only he who sees takes off his shoes." 

An angel appeared to Hagar; one spake to 
Jacob in a dream; one appeared to Moses 
(Exodus xiv) ; one went before the camp of 
Israel; one spake to the children of Israel; one 
to Gideon and to the wife of Manoah ; one ap- 
peared to Elijah; one stood on the threshing 
floor of Onan ; one talked with Zachariah. On 
the most momentous of all nights, "a multitude 
of the heavenly host" appeared suddenly to 
The Shepherds. One appeared to Mary; one 
opened the door of Peter's prison and set him 



134 Spirit Life 

free ; two appeared to Jesus ; one appeared to 
the two Marys at the sepulchre; one foretold 
the birth of John the Baptist ; one appeared to 
John at Patmos ; and two, claiming to be Moses 
and Elias, appeared to Jesus, Peter, James 
and John. A respectable list, not to be slighted 
off, since it is drawn from records that for two 
thousand years have commanded implicit ac- 
ceptance throughout Christendom and in part 
for a longer span throughout Jewry. 

LYING SPIRITS 

Wherever there are apparitions, especially 
where they occur in dark seances, the danger 
of imposture, of false impersonation, is immi- 
nent. In fact it extends to all spirit contact in 
whatever kind, but especially with trance media. 
The unholy ghost who at Washington tried 
to make me believe he was Leopold de Meyer 
may serve as an example. In communications 
coming through media in trance, I can recall no 
end of occasions on which I have been favored 
with voluble ignorance by Socrates, Plato, and 
other illustrious ancients who must have slipped 
their feet most lamentably if they still are 
slouching around this earth and the boarding 
house neighborhoods thereof. The de Meyer 



Spirit Life 135 

lady's "control" went so far as to try to get me 
to take on Benjamin Franklin — a matter I 
most certainly will mention to that great man 
when or if I catch up with him in the (bright, 
I hope) hereafter. 

These performances, and most apparitions, 
are the work of an order of beings called nature 
spirits — or elementals. Semiconscious forces, 
the Pucks and Ariels of poesy, Brownies of 
Scotland, Little People of Ireland, Pixies of 
the west of England; the low comedians of 
nature's borderland. Mrs. Besant in her wise 
little book, "Death and After," says they "play 
a great part at seances, and are mostly the 
agents who are active in producing physical 
phenomena. They throw about or carry ob- 
jects, make noises, ring bells," and so on. 
Sometimes they play pranks with the discarded 
shells — etheral doubles — of people who have 
passed on, animating them and representing 
them to be the spirits of great personalities who 
lived on earth, but who have sadly degenerated 
in the 'spirit world,' judging by their effu- 



sions." 



Once at a dark seance I was irritated into 
saying one of the noisiest of them was a blessed 



136 Spirit Life 

fool (reverse that adjective, please) , and there- 
upon I got a whack aside my head that rang for 
hours, so heartily it was delivered. 

THE SUBSTANCE OF APPARITIONS 

Spirit is matter too finely divided for our 
visualization. If we are to see, it must be 
clothed, given substance as well as form. I 
will have more on the subject later, but for this 
place let me quote old Delachambre, who says 
the form "of the soul" is not fixed and deter- 
minate like that of solid bodies : 

"It is vague and changeable like that of the 
air and liquids, which assume the form of all 
the solid bodies surrounding them ; and the dif- 
ference is that the vivacity of the forms that 
supervene to the latter is of necessity, and that 
which is found in spiritual substances depends 
on their will; for as they move as they please 
all their parts, they also assume whatever form 
they desire." 

This is bland, as requiring no detail, but ex- 
perience has shown its truth. 

Concurrently, experience has shown its 
abuse. Hamlet had reason for the doubt that 
crossed his mind after he had talked with his 
father's ghost : 



Spirit Life 137 

"The spirit that I have seen 
May be the devil ; and the devil hath power 
To assume a pleasing shape." 

Sargent says that if spirits have this (plastic) 
power, their capabilities of deception as to iden- 
tity may be far greater than we imagine. "Per- 
haps our own spiritual insight, purity and ele- 
vation must be the measure of our ability to 
detect spiritual impostors." 

Of what stuff are these forms? We are not 
obliged to go to neotheosophy for answer to 
that. Neotheosophy would have one ready to 
hand, but it would be obscured by neotheosophic 
terminology, and formed along lines of its own 
neoscience — or else all precedent were unre- 
garded. Rather adopt Banquo's opinion after 
he and Macbeth had been seeing things on the 
heath: "The earth hath bubbles as the water 
hath, and these are of them." 

They are formed of physical ethers, magnetic 
in nature, assembleable at a conjunction of 
causes paralleling in a more dense domain those 
which bring together the particles that form 
clouds. In varying degrees of attenuation or 
of density, these ethers suffuse all physical 
forms of life. 



138 Spirit Life 

That which suffuses a human body passes 
out at bodily death, and for a time long or short 
as the quality of the individual may impose, it 
serves as a sort of sheath for his finer infolds — - 
let us say the soul, temporarily encasing 
the spirit, the living, lasting Ego; and the 
memory, which is the stored up body of expe- 
rience acquired in the fleshly term just ended. 
It is really a diffusible physical quantity, well 
enough known to physical science. 

Doctor Hills, for years a practitioner in 
Cleveland, once described to me the release of 
an etheral double from a dying physical body. 
He was at the time a member of the staff of 
Bartholomew hospital, in London, and had at- 
tended a hopeless case, a woman. The nurse 
in charge called him hurriedly one day, and put 
up the screens around the bed. 

The death was quiet. As he sat a few 
moments after the last breath, he became aware 
of a misty appearance, faint at first, along the 
body. It took shape gradually, until it was 
there plainly enough, a vaporous duplication 
of and resting on the woman's form. Then it 
began to rise, separating from the body slowly, 
but retaining a connection at about the heart 
line, or a little above. As it rose this connection 



Spirit Life 139 

thinned to the appearance of a cord that 
lengthened and became slighter as the double 
floated slowly up, until almost at the ceiling it 
seemed to break, or rather be drawn from the 
dead body into the body of the double, which 
continued to rise until it reached the ceiling, 
and gently passed through as though no ceiling 
were there — and out of his sight. 

The nurse noticed his upturned face, and 
asked him what he was looking at. 

"Didn't you see it?" he asked. 

"No," answered the nurse puzzled and 
openly suspicious. 

DEN THOMPSON AND THE LIVE-MAN GHOST 

I was impolitely treated on yet another occa- 
sion, in a Sunday evening dark seance of the 
circle variety on the west side, Chicago, where 
an entrance fee was charged and no questions 
were asked. Any lady or gent could sit in for 
the small sum of half a dollar, five dimes, two 
quarters, ten nickels, or fifty cents — as at a side- 
show with a ballyhoo. No other introduction 
was given or required. 

I had gone there with James M. Hill, my 
partner through five prosperous years in a 
theatrical enterprise. Mr. Hill was manager 



140 Spirit Life 

also for my old and beloved friend Denman 
Thompson. With us was his brother, David K. 
Hill, of the commercial firm of Willoughby, 
Hill and Company. The others were strange 
to us and seemingly to each other — a cheap lot, 
not at all the sort you would care to ask to your 
house. 

Thompson originated at Swansea, in the 
b'gosh belt of New Hampshire. The country- 
men in his play were copies of people who lived 
in the Swansea neighborhood. Mr. Hill had 
been up there with him, and had made acquaint- 
ance with many, among them Si Holcomb, the 
town tailor. 

In the play, Denman as "Joshua Whitcomb" 
had a proud line about a suit of clothes he had 
made to order in Swansea by Holcomb, to wear 
in Boston: "Si Holcomb cut 'em out for me.'' 

It was a noisy seance. An accordion, a 
guitar, a cornet, and I don't know what else, 
were floating over our heads and being dread- 
fully misplayed. The usual balls of lambent 
vapor were drifting within the circle, and the 
"meejie" (her guide was an Indian who though 
presumably dead was far from being good) 
was delivering messages in a weird dialect and 
helping sitters to recognize invisible parties 



Spirit Life 141 

who never got farther than initials in announc- 
ing identity, when of a sudden Mr. Hill called 
out 

"Si Holcomb!" and let go my hand. 

Instantly the noises stopped, and the floating 
instruments came down, crash. A guitar 
struck the top of my head with a resounding 
bang. Hands were loosed all round, and lights 
turned up. Mr. Hill's release of my hand had 
"broke the magnetic chain," the meejie told us. 
The show was over. 

I'd had enough, anyway. That guitar had 
raised a lump on my head, and it hurt. 

On our w r ay downtown Mr. Hill told me why 
he had cried out. One of the vapor balls had 
opened close before him, and had shown the 
face and spoken the name of Si Holcomb. 

"I didn't know he was dead," said he. 

Small wonder ; for the next day Si Holcomb 
in the flesh turned up at the theatre. He had 
heard Denman was "takin' him off on top of 
the stage boards out west," and had come to 
look into the matter. His ghostly impersonator 
was probably some stray who in his earthy days 
had been a regular divvil in his own home town, 
and had not yet learned better than to trifle with 
immortal things. 



142 Spirit Life 



Place this experience in contrast with that 
other at Mr. McVicker's house, and you have a 
fairly good exemplification of the fact that like 
attracts like. Here was a mixed company of 
curiosity seekers, low in character value, and 
getting nothing but rough stuff. There was 
a company of high character value, really want- 
ing to learn. One drew loud and boisterous 
conduct; the other sincerity. 

DARK WAYS OF THE CABINET SPOOK 

The dark seance is always open to deceptive 
purposes; but the dark seance where the me- 
dium — the "psj^chic" — is in a cabinet, is about 
the best place I know of to keep away from. 
No soul still animated by a self-respecting 
spirit could by any possibility bring itself to 
manifestation in conditions that invite and pro- 
tect trickery. I say so after having been fed 
up to repletion with cabinet performances in 
dark or dimly lighted rooms. These are things 
whereof a little more than a little is by much too 
much. Yet they have singular attraction for 
beginners. 

If a first demonstration of survival beyond 
death is even half convincing, eager credulity 



Spirit Life 143 

sets in and the seeker will swallow anything as 
easily as Jonah swallowed the whale. (Or was 
it the other way about? It doesn't matter. 
Either is good.) In perfect good faith Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle accepted the case of Katy 
King, innocently unaware that the Katy King 
case had exploded mephitically almost forty 
years before it came to his notice, one of the 
rankest impostures known in a prolific depart- 
ment of imposition. Elinor Glyn was so im- 
pressed by what she saw in a materializing 
seance at New York that upon her return to 
London she wrote an account of it, dwelling 
particularly upon the apparition of John 
Brown — Harper's Ferry, Old Ossawattomy 
Brown, whom she described as a stout little 
man with whisker trimmings of the kind that 
in their time had been known as "Galway slug- 
gers," and a nervous, quick, commanding man- 
ner. Poor old Ossawattomy from Bleeding 
Kansas! Tall, gaunt, with the face of an 
ascetic, the beard of an apostle, the solemnity 
of a cold fanatic ! What would he have thought 
of it, could he have seen? It is to weep. 

The only dark cabinet apparition within the 
scope of my observation that I had any reason 



144 Spirit Life 

for thinking to be genuine I had to take on the 
word of another. It was in Cleveland, in the 
presence of about twenty people. There had 
been some especially atrocious singing ("Yes, 
we will gather at the ree-a-ver" and other of the 
like) and a few baby figures, old stuff and sim- 
ple, when the curtains parted and the shape of 
a man emerged, and asked whether anyone 
present recognized him. Several answered 
promptly and said he was Mr. Wade. Sitting 
next at my left was Mrs. Hays, a woman of 
good social position. Mrs. Hays whispered 
that it really was Mr. Wade, with whom she 
had been well acquainted — the man who had 
given the city the fine park that bears his name. 
He had little to say beyond a boost for Cleve- 
land, and showed for only a minute or so. It 
may have been straight. I'm willing to give the 
question the benefit usual to doubt. 

Mr. Perry, a decent sort, new to spookery, 
was called to the curtain that evening by a tall 
shape that said it was the spirit of his sister. 
They had a whispered conversation which after- 
ward he told me was not convincing. "All she 
would say," he said, "was 'I'm so happy!' She 
wouldn't come through with any details." 



Spirit Life 145 



"visions or the night' 5 



"Is there anything whereof it may be said, 
See, this is new? It hath been already of old 
time, which was before us." 

If you have such a thing as a Bible on board, 
dig it up and turn to the fourth chapter of Job, 
and there you may read, 

"Now, a thing was secretly brought to me, 
and mine ears received a little thereof. 

"In thoughts from the visions of the night, 
when deep sleep f alleth upon men, 

"Fear came upon me, and trembling, which 
made all of my bones to shake. 

"Then a spirit passed before my face. . . . 

"It stood still, but I could not discern the 
form thereof: an image was before mine 
eyes. . . ." 

WHY GHOSTS PREFER THE DARK 

One of the most common questions asked 
about apparitions in dark seances is Why these 
things are done in the dark? The simplest an- 
swer I can give is that while an etheral shape 
may cohere easily for a little while in the dark, 
or in a soft light, it could not cohere more than 
a few seconds under the impact of light waves 
in sunshine, or even in the gray light of an over- 



146 Spirit Life 

cast day. The light-vibrations of an ordinary 
electric bulb are high enough to disperse any 
but an etheral body projected into our field of 
vision by a powerful impulse or purpose to be 
seen and probably to be heard; and even such 
an one would hold through a few seconds 
merely. 

THE TROUBLE WITH THE WHOLE THING 

These cases are all I care to give. There are 
many more I would give, if they were not 
touched at the edges by obvious question or 
doubt. Those I cite were given me in perfect 
faith, at first hand, and to the senses of the 
givers they were convincing evidences. 

But there is the trouble with the whole thing. 
What is unimpeachable evidence to the senses 
of one is evidence to the senses of another only 
in so far as the veracity of one is credited by 
the other. It may inspire belief, but there is a 
wide gulf between belief and knowledge. Be- 
lief may be a subject of desire or volition, but 
knowledge is positive. You can believe a whole 
lot that you don't know. 

THE GREAT RHAPSODY 

"Are we not Spirits," asks Carlyle, "that are 
shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and 



Spirit Life 147 

then fade away again into air and invisibility? 
This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact ; 
we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and 
are Apparitions ; round Us, as round the veriest 
spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes 
are as years and aeons. Come there not tones 
of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp- 
strings, like the Songs of beatified Souls? And 
again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our dis- 
cordant, screech-owlish debatings and recrim- 
inations) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, and 
fearful; or uproar and revel in our mad Dance 
of the Dead — till the scent of the morning air 
summons us to our still Home; and dreamy 
Night becomes awake and Day ? Where now is 
Alexander of Macedon? Does the steel Host 
that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and 
Arbela remain behind him ; or have they all van- 
ished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must ? 
Napoleon, too, and his Moscow Retreats and 
Austerlitz Campaigns ! Was it all other than 
the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with 
its howling tumult that made Night hideous, 
flitted away? — Ghosts! There are nigh a 
thousand million walking the Earth openly at 
noontide; some half -hundred have vanished 



148 Spirit Life 

from it, some half -hundred have arisen in it, 
ere thy watch ticks once. 

"O Heaven! it is mysterious, it is awful to 
consider that we not only carry each a future 
Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, 
Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; 
this stormy Force ; this lif e-blood with its burn- 
ing Passion? They are dust and shadow; a 
Shadow-system gathered round our Me; 
wherein, through some moments or years, the 
Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. 
That warrior on his strong war horse, fire 
flashes through his eyes ; force dwells in his arm 
and heart; but warrior and war-horse are a 
vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. 
Stately they tread the Earth, as though it were 
a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; 
it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse 
sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? 
Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little 
while ago, they were not ; a little while, and they 
are not, their very ashes are not. 

"So has it been from the beginning, so will it 
be to the end. Generation after generation 
takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth- 
issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's 
mission Appears. What Force and Fire is in 



Spirit Life 149 

each he expends; one grinding in the mill of 
Industry; one hunter-like climbing into the 
giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly 
dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war 
with his fellows: — and then the Heaven-sent 
is recalled ; his earthly Vesture falls away, and 
soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. 
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering 
train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysteri- 
ous Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, 
quick-succeeding grandeur, through the un- 
known Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire- 
breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the 
Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished 
Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. 
Earth's mountains are leveled, and her seas 
filled up, in our passage : can the Earth, which 
is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which 
have reality and are alive? On the hardest 
adamant some foot-print of us is stamped in; 
the last Rear of the host will read traces of the 
earliest Van. But whence? O Heaven, 
whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; 
only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, 
from God and to God. 

" 'We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on ; and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep !' " 



WEIGHING A SOUL 

Prof. Elmer Gates in his Washington labo- 
ratory about 1905 secured several photographs 
of the etheric body, in one instance showing 
its departure out of an animal body immediately 
after physical death; and Prof. Elliott Coues, 
until recently biologist of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution, succeeded in demonstrating it with a 
living human subject, and found that it had no 
independent power of thought or will. Of it- 
self, it was what Professor Coues call "soul 
stuff" — attenuated matter, merely. 

Some years after Professor Coues made his 
experiments with "soul stuff," the Journal of 
the American Society for Psychical Research 
gave publicity to considerable correspondence 
on the subject, including among others less in- 
teresting an article by Dr. Duncan McDougall 
describing experiments intended to determine 
its weight — an attribute Professor Coues 
wanted to demonstrate, but could not for lack 
of instruments sufficiently sensitive. If mem- 
ory serves, Prof. Elmer Gates got as far as 

150 



Spirit Life 151 

tipping a knife-edge balance with a quantity 
of it. Doctor McDougall took a new way of 
settling the question, which I quote from his 
article. He says : 

"According to the latest conception of 
science, substance or space-occupying material 
is divisible into that which is gravitative — 
solids, liquids, gases, all having weight — and 
the ether, which is non-gravitative. It seemed 
impossible to me that the soul substance could 
consist of ether. If the conception be true that 
ether is continuous and not to be conceived of 
as existing or capable of existing in separate 
masses, we have here the most solid ground for 
believing that the soul substance we are seeking 
is not ether, because one of the very first at- 
tributes of personal identity is the quality or 
condition of separateness. Nothing is more 
borne in upon consciousness than that the you 
in you and the me in me, the ego, is detached 
and separate from all things else — the non-ego. 

"We are therefore driven back upon the 
assumption that the soul substance, so neces- 
sary to the conception of continuing personal 
identity after the death of this material body, 
must still be a form of gravitative matter, or 



152 Spirit Life 

perhaps a middle form of substance neither 
gravitative matter nor other, not capable of 
being weighed, and yet not identical with ether. 
Since, however, the substance considered in our 
hypothesis must be linked organically with the 
body until death takes place, it appears to me 
more reasonable to think that it must be some 
form of gravitative matter, and therefore 
capable of being detected at death by weighing 
a human being in the act of death.* 

"The subjects experimented upon all gave 
their consent to the experiment weeks before 
the day of death. The experiments did not sub- 
ject the patients to any additional suffering. 

"My first subject was a man dying of tuber- 
culosis. It seemed to me best to select a patient 
dying with a disease that produces great ex- 
haustion, the death occurring with little or no 
muscular movement, because in such a case the 
beam could be kept more perfectly at balance 
and any loss occurring readily noted. 

"The patient was under observation for three 
hours and forty minutes before death, lying on 



♦Please bear In mind that Doctor McDougall's conclusion was 
drawn a few years before Einstein's discovery that light is re- 
sponsive to gravitative pull — a discovery which validated Sir Isaac 
Newton's surmise, and had been postulated though not worked out 
by modern scientists. — W. D. E. 



Spirit Life 153 

a bed arranged on a light framework built upon 
very delicately balanced platform beam scales. 
The patient's comfort was looked after in every 
way, although he was practically moribund 
when placed upon the bed. He lost weight 
slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour, due 
to evaporation of moisture in respiration and 
evaporation of sweat. 

"At the end of three hours and forty minutes 
he expired, and suddenly coincident with death 
the beam end dropped with an audible stroke, 
hitting against the lower limiting bar and re- 
maining there with no rebound. The loss was 
ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce. 

"The loss of weight could not be due to evap- 
oration of respiratory moisture and sweat, be- 
cause that had already been determined as go- 
ing on, in his case, at the rate of one-sixtieth 
of an ounce per minute, whereas this loss was 
sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce 
in a few seconds. 

"The bowels did not move; if they had 
moved, the weight would still have remained 
upon the bed except for a slow loss by the evap- 
oration of moisture ; depending, of course, upon 
the fluidity of the foeces. The bladder evacu- 
ated one or two drachms of urine. This re- 



154 Spirit Life 

mained upon the bed, and could only have influ- 
enced the weight by slow gradual evaporation, 
and therefore in no way could account for the 
sudden loss. 

"There remained but one more channel of 
loss to explore — the expiration of all but the 
residual air in the lungs. Getting upon the 
bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual 
balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as 
forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon 
the beam. My colleague got upon the bed, 
and placed the beam at balance. Forcible in- 
spiration and expiration of air on his part had 
no effect. In this case we certainly have an 
inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of 
an ounce. Is it the soul substance ? How else 
shall we explain it? 

"My second patient was a man moribund 
from consumption. He was on the bed about 
four hours and fifteen minutes under observa- 
tion before death. The first four hours he lost 
weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce 
per hour. He had much slower respiration 
than the first case, which accounted for the dif- 
ference in loss of weight from evaporation and 
respiratory moisture. 



Spirit Life 155 

"The last fifteen minutes he had ceased to 
breathe, but his facial muscles still moved con- 
vulsively, and then, coinciding with the last 
movement of the facial muscle, the beam 
dropped. The weight lost was found to be 
half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated 
the heart and found it stopped. I tried again, 
and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty 
grains. In the eighteen minutes that elapsed 
between the time he ceased breathing until we 
were certain of death, there was a weight loss 
of one and one-half ounces and fifty grains, 
compared with a loss of three ounces in four 
hours during which time the ordinary channels 
of loss were at work. No bowel movement took 
place. The bladder moved, but the urine re- 
mained upon the bed, and could not have evap- 
orated enough through the thick bed clothing 
to have influenced the result. 

"The beam at the end of eighteen minutes 
of doubt was placed again with the end in slight 
contact with the upper bar, and watched for 
forty minutes, but no further loss took place. 

"My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of 
an ounce. If placed at balance, one-tenth of 
an ounce would lift the beam up close to the 
upper limiting bar, another one-tenth ounce 



156 Spirit Life 

would bring it up and keep it in direct contact, 
then if the two-tenths were removed the beam 
would drop to the lower bar and then slowly 
oscillate till balance was reached again. 

"This patient was of a totally different tem- 
perament from the first. His death was very 
gradual, so that we had great doubt from the 
ordinary evidence to say just what moment he 
died. 

"My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, 
showed a weight of half an ounce lost, coinci- 
dent with death, and an additional loss of one 
ounce a few minutes later. 

"In the fourth case, a woman dying of dia- 
betic coma, unfortunately our scales were not 
finely adjusted, and there was a good deal of 
interference by people opposed to our work; 
and although at death the beam sunk so that it 
required from three-eighths to one-half ounce 
to bring it back to the point preceding death, 
yet I regard this test as of no value. 

"My fifth case, a man dying of tuberculosis, 
showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring 
about three-eighths of an ounce which could not 
be accounted for. This occurred exactly simul- 
taneously with death ; but peculiarly, on bring- 
ing the beam up again with weights and later 



Spirit Life 157 

removing them, the beam did not sink back to 
stay back for fully fifteen minutes. It was 
impossible to account for the three-eighths of an 
ounce drop, it was so sudden and distinct, the 
beam hitting the lower bar with as great a noise 
as in the first case. Our scales in this case were 
very sensitively balanced. 

"My sixth and last case was not a fair test. 
The patient died almost within five minutes 
after being placed upon the bed, and died while 
I was adjusting the beam. 

WHERE DOES THE LOST SUBSTANCE GO? 

"The net results of the experiments con- 
ducted on human beings is that a loss of sub- 
stance occurs at death not accounted for by 
known channels of loss. Is it the soul sub- 
stance ? It would seem to me to be so. Accord- 
ing to our hypothesis such a substance is 
necessary to the assumption of continuing or 
persisting personality after bodily death, and 
here we have experimental demonstration that 
a substance capable of being weighed does leave 
the human body at death. 

"If this substance is a counterpart of the 
physical body, has the same bulk, occupies the 
same dimensions in space, then it is a very much 



158 Spirit Life 

lighter substance than the atmosphere sur- 
rounding our earth, which weighs about one and 
one-fourth ounces per cube foot. This would 
be a fact of great significance, as such a body- 
would readily ascend in our atmosphere. The 
absence of a weighable mass leaving the body 
at death would of course be no argument 
against continuing personality, for a space- 
occupying body or substance might exist not 
capable of being weighed, such as the ether. 

"It has been suggested that the ether might 
be that substance, but with the modern concep- 
tion of science that the ether is the primary 
form of all substance, that all other forms of 
matter are merely differentiations of the ether 
having varying densities, then it seems to me 
that soul substance, which in this life must be 
linked organically with the body, cannot be 
identical with the ether. Moreover, the ether 
is supposed to be non-discontinuous, a continu- 
ous whole and not capable of existing in sep- 
arate masses as ether, whereas the one prime 
requisite for a continuing personality or indi- 
viduality is the quality of separateness, the ego 
as separate and distinct from all things else. 

"To my mind, therefore, the soul substance 
cannot be the ether as ether ; but if the theory 



Spirit Life 159 

that ether is the primary form of all substance 
is true, then the soul substance must necessar- 
ily be a differentiated form of it. 

"If it is definitely proven that there is in the 
human being a loss of substance at death not 
accounted for by known channels of loss, and 
that such loss of substance does not occur in 
the dog, as my experiments would seem to 
show, then we have here a physiological differ- 
ence between the human and the canine at least, 
and probably between the human and all other 
forms of animal life. 

"I am aware that a very large number of 
experiments would be required before the mat- 
ter could be proved beyond any possibility of 
error; but if further and sufficient experimen- 
tation proves that there is a loss of substance 
occurring at death and not accounted for by 
known channels of loss, the establishment of 
such a truth cannot fail to be of the utmost 
importance. 

"One ounce of fact more or less will have 
more weight in demonstrating the truth of the 
reality of continued existence with the neces- 
sary basis of substance to rest upon than all the 
hairsplitting theories of theologians and meta- 
physicians combined. 



i6o Spirit Life 

"If other experiments by other experiment- 
ers prove that there is a loss of weight occurring 
at death, not accounted for by known channels 
of loss, we must either admit the theory that it 
is the hypothetical soul substance, or some 
other explanation of that phenomenon should 
be forthcoming. If proved true, the materialis- 
tic conception will have been fully met, and 
proof of the substantial basis for mind or spirit 
or soul continuing after the death of the body, 
insisted upon as necessary by the materialists, 
will have been furnished. 

"It will prove also that the spiritistic concep- 
tion of the immateriality of the soul is wrong. 
The postulates of religious creeds have not been 
a positive and final settlement of the question. 

"The theories of all the philosophers and all 
the philosophies offer no final solution of the 
problem of continued personality after bodily 
death. This fact alone of a space-occupying 
body of measurable weight disappearing at 
death, if verified, furnishes the substantial basis 
for persisting personality or a conscious ego 
surviving the act of bodily death ; and the ele- 
ment of certainty is worth more than the pos- 
tulates of all the creeds and all the metaphysical 
arguments combined." 



Spirit Life 161 

VISIBLE DOUBLES OF LIVING PERSONS 

In 1903 the school of Nancy in France se- 
cured ocular evidence of what was defined as "a 
magnetic body" in the living human body. It 
really was magnetic in cohesion, and solid 
enough in favor able, conditions to be repeatedly 
photographed. By action accordant with every 
movement of muscle and limb, it showed itself 
to be a part of the material organism. 

A few years later Doctor W. J. Kilner of 
London succeeded in visualizing this aura, as 
he called it, by methods of his own devising. 
The European correspondent of the Laffan 
news bureau was present at a demonstration 
made by Doctor Felkin, a colleague of Doctor 
Kilner. 

"The doctor," he wrote, "has made an ap- 
paratus which consists of a number of what 
he calls spectauranine glass screens, each about 
four inches in length and an inch and a half 
wide. Each screen is made of two plates of 
very thin glass, between which, hermetically 
sealed in, is a fluid. The screens vary in color. 
Some are red, others are blue, varying in depth 
of color to suit the eyes of the investigator. 



162 Spirit Life 

"In a small room was the subject of the ex- 
periments, a well made woman of medium 
height and apparently in good health. Doctor 
Felkin first of all told her exactly the nature of 
the experiments he was about to make. Then 
having instructed the observer to look steadily 
at the daylight through one of the spectauranine 
screens, and having placed the woman about a 
foot away from a dead dark background fac- 
ing the only window in the room, he proceeded 
to draw a dark blind half way down this 
window. 

"From below he drew up a blind of dark 
serge until it overlapped the upper blind suf- 
ficiently to allow light so dim to filter into the 
room that only the white form of the subject's 
body could be discerned in the gloom. 

" 'Now turn around,' said Doctor Felkin, 
'and tell me what you see, or if you see anything 
at all, for there are perhaps four or five per- 
sons out of every hundred who through some 
inherent defect in the eyesight are physically 
unable to perceive the aura.' 

"For perhaps a quarter of a minute the only 
object that could be made out in the dark was 
the subject's form and its outline. Then grad- 
ually, as the eyes grew accustomed to the dark, 



Spirit Life 163 

a sort of double mist or halo, the one within the 
other and the inner one denser than the outer, 
became more and more distinctly visible, 

"The outlines of this mist exactly followed 
the curves and the contour of the subject's 
body. The color of the outer aura seemed to 
be a blue gray, that of the inner aura was 
darker; also, apparently the inner aura was 
denser. In the triangular space formed by the 
sides of the body and the angle of the arms, as 
the subject remained with her hands resting 
lightly on her hips, the halo could be seen most 
clearly. 

"Presently, acting upon Doctor Felkin's in- 
structions, the subject raised and extended first 
one arm, then the other. Then she joined her 
hands at the back of her neck. And always 
the mist of aura followed, as though it were 
itself an outline of some sort of shadow of the 
limbs. 

"Doctor Felkin's next experiment was to 
make hypnotic passes in the direction of the 
patient, first from one side, then from the other, 
while finally he stood beside her, and raising 
his arms vertically bent over his hand, allow- 
ing his partly extended fingers to point down 
directly to the crown of her head. 



164 Spirit Life 

"Every time these passes were made a fine 
streak of indescribable hue seerfied to shoot out 
from the tip of each finger straight toward the 
subject." 

The observer naturally wanted to know what 
practical use could be made of the "discovery/' 
Doctorlike, the exhibitor explained that "the 
aura varies in shade, density, breadth and shape, 
according to the subject's health. An acute 
and lasting pain such as sciatica is made visible 
by the length to which the aura of a particular 
shade and density extends along the limb in 
which the pain is felt. The aura of a subject 
suffering from hysteria differs entirely in out- 
line from that of one suffering from epilepsy." 

Dr. Patrick S. O'Donnell of Dublin has im- 
proved on Doctor Kilner's method of observa- 
tion and made successful use of the visible 
etheral aura in diagnosis. Doctor O'Donnell 
has gone even farther than his English col- 
league in defining the aura. He has found a 
fine inner division, conforming precisely with 
the lines of the body and appearing less affected 
by health conditions than the other two. 

About 1895, Charles W. Leadbeater pub- 
lished a full description of these aurae, with 



Spirit Life 165 

their variability as affected by mentality and 
moods. 

The etheral double is sometimes called the 
astral shell, and is capable of being independ- 
ently projected in our field of vision with con- 
siderable appearance of solidity, especially 
when the physical body is in suspended anima- 
tion. (See page 136. ) v 

As it acts upon the physical body, so is it in 
turn directed by a finer body of magnetic mat- 
ter which may be called spiritual, and this third 
body has conscious intelligence. The two are 
contained in the physical body as water and 
sand may at the same time occupy one cup. 

We know the total organism has intelligence. 
We know that in death the physical body has 
no such thing. It has been found that the body 
of etheral matter, by itself alone, is similarly 
lacking. Apprehension, memory, and all the 
results of living are with the finer body of spir- 
itual magnetism, and properties of it alone. 
The ultimate destination of this third or spir- 
itual body may be largely an inference, but the 
inference is hard to escape. Doctor Drum- 
mond, of the University of Montreal, made a 
rational case for it in his singularly interesting 
book, "The Ascent of Man." 



166 Spirit Life 

The three-fold constitution of a human being 
is no new concept. It is old as the "problem" 
of life. If it be not true at least in its conclu- 
sion, then the whole scheme of creation is a 
blind ferocity, having no purpose but cruelty, 
no outcome at all. A chaos not to be thought 
of, impossible to think of. 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE 

The steps in the process from our present 
condition to that in which advanced intelli- 
gences have their being are traceable with com- 
parative facility. The way in which they some- 
times impart to us word of things that are out- 
side our ability to foresee is explicable. 

When a man's physical body dies, his etheral 
body (it is only a ghost) is set free, and with 
it for the time being goes the spiritual entity, 
not yet liberated. The region or condition then 
entered upon is variously known as purgatory, 
or limbo, or the valley of the shadow, or the 
land of shades. After the spiritual entity is 
finally freed from its integuments, it passes 
beyond our power to follow with any certainty 
that could easily be made clear. 

The changes may be comparatively abrupt, 
but the one that occurs with the death of the 



Spirit Life 167 

body brings no corresponding abrupt change 
in the nature or character of the body's late 
inhabitant. The "twinkling of an eye" change 
comes not then, but far off in sempiternal space, 
outside the little circle of this world and its 
dull dial-light. 

PERSISTENT PERSONAL CHARACTER 

A scoundrel here is a scoundrel there — a good 
man is a good man; but the scoundrel lingers 
longest, and is most free to talk or otherwise 
display himself according to his nature, when- 
ever he can. The eidolon of a bad man, actu- 
ated by a spiritual consciousness in a low stage 
of development, is dull, and hangs as long as 
possible around the scene of its fleshly his- 
tory. It is "earthbound," and eager with a 
longing to gratify the old appetites and pas- 
sions, to repossess itself of a fleshly body for 
that gratification. Hence obsession, an afflic- 
tion not uncommon, but seldom understood. 
Hence likewise the grewsome performances in 
dark seances, and the maunderings of most 
psychics. 

On the other hand, a high individuality stays 
near us but a little while. It follows a natural 
tendency and passes onward, and we lose touch 



168 Spirit Life 

of it. Such an one has no more wish — or power 
— to turn back than a full-grown man has to 
resume the stature and status of a child. The 
wish to retrogade is in a ratio inverse to the 
degree of development; the power is absent 
even if the wish were there, for just as lighter 
bodies ascend where heavier would either sink 
or remain stationary, so the finer souls pass 
on, and in a little while are outside the most 
remote rim of our perception. But even faith, 
to which so many of us pin so much, has held 
out no rational hope that love or longing or 
anything else can bring them back across that 
boundary. It is in very truth the bourne from 
which no traveler returns. 

" 0, how far, 
How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints 

When once gone from us! We may cry against 
The lighted windows of thy fair June heaven, 
Where all the souls are happy, and not one, 
Not even my father, look from work or play 

To ask, 'who is it that calls after us, 
Below there, in the dark?'" 

How do I know this to be so? I have twice 
had word from those who were about to pass out 
of the second remove from earth, into the third ; 
once, as I have already told, from the wife who 
had gone out with such tragic suddenness, and 



Spirit Life 169 

again from one of the sanest and broadest men 
of great affairs America in the nineteenth cen- 
tury produced — I withhold his name for family- 
reasons only. By both I was informed they 
were about to go another step beyond and 
would lose sight of me until my own arrival in 
that freer state. 

SECOND-HAND GHOSTS 

In all cases, the deserted body of etheral mat- 
ter eventually returns to its elements, as the 
flesh-body does, but sometimes its dissolution is 
arrested; and then, as one writer says, "it may 
be taken possession of by a spiritual intelligence 
other than its original owner, and preserved 
intact for a considerable time. It may be, and 
often is, employed as a sort of mask by unscru- 
pulous intelligences on the spiritual plane, for 
the purpose of impersonating its original owner 
to subjective psychics who are unable to con- 
trol the processes by which they are impressed 
with subjective clairvoyance." 

Besides furnishing inspiration to such psy- 
chics, these simulacra, original or impersonat- 
ing, cause all physical manifestations — abso- 
lutely all save those produced by deliberate 
jugglery. Impersonation is by no means con- 



170 Spirit Life 

fined to "the original owner," but may be what- 
ever the usurping tenant pleases to make it. 
Take for instance my experience with the forc- 
ible liar who said he was Leopold de Meyer, 

NO SUMMONS BUN IN SHADOWLAND 

It is common with media to pretend to com- 
ply with a wish that some certain personality be 
produced. A doubt may be extended now and 
then, where the medium is imposed upon by a 
discarnate cheat, as in that case, but their writs 
have no force in shadowland. They cannot 
command visits from designated shades, no 
matter how ready they are to take money for 
assuming to do it. 



BETWEEN TWO WORLDS 

John Braham passed away about 1908. He 
was one of the best opera conductors we've had, 
for his love of music was broad and deep, and 
his own melodic sense was pure. He was 
brother to Dave Braham, who conducted the 
orchestra of the old Harrigan and Hart thea- 
tre in Broadway at Eighth street and created 
all the songs that arose from that house and 
floated over the world and have not yet been 
forgotten. Many of them are in the records 
used in our music machines, revived by sheer 
power of beauty or humor or pathos. John 
himself was during many seasons orchestra 
director for the Bostonians, the best light opera 
organization in the long roll of good ones that 
stands to the credit of our American stage, and 
many of his songs, too, as well as Dave's, are 
on the discs. He was an endearing man, sweet 
minded, warm hearted, a brother to all human 
kind, selfless and helpful alway. While he 
held to no formal faith, he was finely attuned 
and responsive to spiritual thought and the 
purer ethics. Some of my most happy hours 

171 



172 Spirit Life 

were those I had with him and his family at 
their house on Long Island — usually Sundays. 

One afternoon we were talking about phe- 
nomena that seemed supernormal. He never 
had bothered with spiritism, chiefly, I think, 
because his nature and his good breeding shrank 
from things having any quality of fadism, or 
that were followed by unpleasant folk. But he 
could not reconcile himself to a belief that we 
must perish with the body, since if that could 
possibly be so much of the best of us would be 
lost through mere brevity of time ; and farther, 
that a scheme of life which shut off an equaliza- 
tion of things unfinished or unbalanced here 
would be too cruel for any plausible scheme of 
nature. Toward the last he was inclined to 
believe in continuity of life beyond this one. 
He was influenced by an experience. 

One summer day in the country, alone in the 
fields, he was eating a piece of fruit. In a sud- 
den fit of coughing a piece of it lodged 
in his throat and strangled him. Blood 
congested in his head, a maze of colors con- 
volved before his eyes, his ears were filled with 
thunderous noise, and in an agony that seemed 
ages long, he felt himself streaming outward 
from his head and was lost in an abysmal void. 



Spirit Life 173 

Then he was floating up, and looking down 
upon his body, lying there quietly in the sun- 
light; and around him were friends, many of 
them, all known to have died; old friends and 
dear, who were waving him not to come farther, 
but go back — go back: 

"You have too much to do." "Your time 
hasn't come yet, John." 

He was bewildered, confused. He knew he 
had not died. But there was his body — 

The voices died away, the friendly forms 
grew dim, and the dark came on again like an 
enveloping cloud. 

The next he knew he was in pain, as if a 
million needles were being stuck in his body all 
over, all at once, a prickling torture that grew 
so intense he cried out. His throat cleared 
with one spasmodic movement and his eyes 
opened. He was in the body again, tired, and 
alone. 

ONE WHO DIED AND CAME BACK 

In the third volume of the Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research a case of the 
same kind is reported in the first person by a 
man whose name is not given, but whose good 
faith will not be questioned by anyone who 



174 Spirit Life 

knows how earnestly and carefully that Society 
scans the evidences submitted to it, and satisfies 
itself concerning the character and standing of 
witnesses. This witness was a physician. These 
are the essentials of his story: 

"I passed four hours in all without pulse or 
perceptible heartbeat, as I am informed by Dr. 
S. H. Raynes, who was the only physician pres- 
ent. During a portion of this time several of 
the bystanders thought I was dead, and such a 
report being carried outside, the village church 
bell was tolled. Dr. Raynes informs me, how- 
ever, that by bringing his eyes close to my face 
he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so 
very light as to be barely perceptible, and that 
he was upon the point several times of saying, 
'He is dead/ when a gasp would occur in time 
to check him. 

"He thrust a needle deep into the flesh at 
different points from the feet to the hips, but 
got no response. Although I was pulseless for 
four hours, the state of apparent death lasted 
only about half an hour. 

"I lost, I believe, all power of thought or 
knowledge of existence in absolute unconscious- 
ness. Of course I need not guess at the time 
so lost, as in such a state a minute or a thousand 



Spirit Life 175 

years would appear the same. I came again 
into a state of conscious existence, and discov- 
ered that I was still in the body, but the body 
and I had no longer any interests in common. 
I looked in astonishment and joy for the first 
time upon myself — the me, the real Ego, while 
the not-me closed it upon all sides like a sep- 
ulchre of clay. 

"With all the interest of a physician I be- 
held the wonders of my bodily anatomy, inti- 
mately interwoven with which, even tissue for 
tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body. 
I learned that the epidermis was the outside 
boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, 
of the soul. I realized my condition and calmly 
reasoned thus : I have died, as man terms death, 
and yet I am as much a man as ever. I am 
about to get out of the body. I watched the 
interesting process of the separation of soul 
and body. By some power, apparently not my 
own, the Ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, 
as the cradle is rocked, by which process its 
connection with the tissues of the body was 
broken up. After a little time the lateral mo- 
tion ceased, and along the soles of the feet, 
beginning at the toes, passing rapidly to the 
heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the snap- 



176 Spirit Life 

ping of innumerable small cords. When this 
was accomplished, I began slowly to retreat 
from the feet, toward the head, as a rubber 
cord shortens. I remember reaching the hips 
and saying to myself, 'Now there is no life be- 
low the hips.' I can recall no memory of pass- 
ing through the abdomen and chest, but recol- 
lect distinctly when my whole self was collected 
in the head, when I reflected thus : Tam all in 
the head now, and I shall soon be free.' I passed 
around the brain as if it were hollow, compress- 
ing it and its membranes slightly on all sides 
toward the centre, and peeped out between the 
sutures of the skull, emerging like the flattened 
edges of a bag of membranes. I recollect dis- 
tinctly how I appeared to myself something like 
a jellyfish as regards color and form. As I 
emerged, I saw two ladies sitting at my head. 
I measured the distance between the head of 
my cot and the knees of the lady opposite the 
head, and concluded there was room for me to 
stand, but felt considerable embarrassment as 
I reflected that I was about to emerge naked 
before her, but comforted myself with the 
thought that in all probability she would not 
see me with her bodily eyes, as I was a spirit. 
As I emerged from the head I floated up lat- 



Spirit Life 177 

erally like a soap-bubble attached to the bowl 
of a pipe, until I at last broke loose from the 
body and fell lightly to the floor, where I slowly 
rose and expanded to the full stature of a man. 
I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish cast and 
perfectly naked. With a painful sense of em- 
barrassment, I fled toward the partially opened 
door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom 
I was facing, as well as others who I knew were 
about me, but upon reaching the door I found 
myself clothed, and satisfied upon that point, 
I turned and faced the company. As I turned, 
my left elbow came in contact with the arm of 
one of two gentlemen who were standing in the 
door. To my surprise, his arm passed through 
mine without apparent resistance, the several 
parts closing again without pain, as air reunites. 
I looked quickly up at his face to see if he had 
noticed the contact, but he gave me no sign — 
only stood and gazed toward the couch I had 
just left. I directed my gaze in the direction 
of his, and saw my dead body. 

"Suddenly I discovered that I was looking 
at the straight seam down the back of my coat. 
'How is this,' I thought, 'how do I see my 
back?' and I looked again, to reassure myself, 
down the back of the coat, or down the back of 



178 Spirit Life 

my legs to the very heels. I put my hand to my 
face and felt for my eyes. They were where 
they should be. I thought, 'Am I like an owl 
that I can turn my head half-way round? 5 I 
tried the experiment and failed. 

"No. Then it must be that having been out 
of the body but a few moments, I have yet the 
power to use the eyes of the body, and I turned 
about and looked back at the open door, where 
I could see the head of my body in a line with 
me. I discovered then a small cord, like a 
spider's web, running from my shoulders back 
to my body and attaching to it at the base of 
the neck, in front. 

"I was satisfied with the conclusion that by 
means of that cord I was using the eyes of my 
body, and turning, walked down the street. 

"A small, densely black cloud appeared in 
front of me and advanced toward my face. I 
knew that I was to be stopped. I felt the power 
to move or to think leaving me. My hands 
fell powerless to my side, my shoulders and my 
head dropped forward, the cloud touched my 
face, and I knew no more. 

"Without previous thought and without ef- 
fort on my part, my eyes opened. I looked at 



Spirit Life 179 

my hands and then at the little white cot upon 
which I was lying, and realizing that I was in 
the body, in astonishment and disappointment 
I exclaimed : 'What in the world has happened 
tome? Must I die again?' . . . " 



OUIJA 

Doctor Macgowan, a missionary to China, 
writing in the North China Herald in 1843, 
described a contrivance in use from immemorial 
time by the people there: 

"A table is sprinkled equally with bran, flour, 
dust or other powder; and two mediums sit 
down at opposite sides with their hands on the 
table. A hemispherical basket, eight inches in 
diameter, is now reversed, and laid down with 
its edges resting on the tips of one or two fin- 
gers of the two mediums. This basket is to act 
as a penholder ; and a reed or stylus is fastened 
to the rim, or a chopstick thrust through the 
interstices, with the point touching the pow- 
dered table. 

"A ghost meanwhile has been properly in- 
voked ; and the spectators stand around, await- 
ing the result. This is not uniform. Sometimes 
the spirit summoned is unable to write, some- 
times he is mischievously inclined, and the pen 
— for it always moves — will make either a few 

180 



Spirit Life 181 

senseless flourishes on the table, or fashion sen- 
tences that are without meaning, or with a 
meaning that only misleads. This, however, 
is comparatively rare. In general the words 
traced are arranged in the best form of com- 
position, and they communicate intelligence 
wholly unknown to the operators. These oper- 
ators are said to be not only unconscious, but 
unwilling, participants in the feat." 

Doctor Macgowan says that in Nangpo, 
where he was stationed, there were very few 
houses in which this mode of getting messages 
from spirits was not practiced. 

In 1868, shortly after an older great war had 
given a stimulus to spiritual inquiry quite like 
that which followed the German war of 1914, 
there came into popular use an instrument of 
communication called "Planchette." In all es- 
sentials it was like the device described by Doc- 
tor Macgowan, and was the same thing at 
present known as the ouija board. In good 
usage, "weeya." In the vernacular, "weejee." 

Epes Sargent, a well known writer then in 
active production, gave the name to a book deal- 
ing with spiritism and the history thereof, an 
interesting work, still extant. In his first 
phapter, he describes it; 



182 Spirit Life 

"The planchette is a little heartshaped table 
with three legs, one of which is a pointed lead- 
pencil, that can be slipped in and out of a 
socket, and by means of which marks can be 
made on paper. The other two legs have 
casters attached, which can be easily moved in 
any direction. This table is usually about seven 
inches long and five wide. At the apex of the 
heart is the socket, lined with rubber, through 
which the pencil is thrust. The instrument is 
light, so that the slighest application of force 
will move it." 

When "spirit rapping" began to be investi- 
gated, a common practice was to call the alpha- 
bet and note down the letters at which the raps 
were given. Then someone suggested arrang- 
ing a pencil at the foot of a light table and plac- 
ing a sheet of paper under it, that the operating 
force might produce written sentences. 

The device was successful. If set in motion 
by a passive medium it would trace characters, 
words, and sometimes sentences. The methods 
were gradually simplified by placing light, 
small tables on the ordinary table top; then 
pasteboard boxes ; and finally the flat piece of 
wood running on small wheels and called plan- 
chette. Sargent tells what it would do : 



Spirit Life 183 

"Place it on the smooth wood of a table, and 
let one person, or two or more, of a particular 
organization, rest the fingers on it lightly, and 
it will soon begin to move ; and this without any 
conscious intent or action on the part of any 
individual present. 

"Then, by placing a sheet of white paper 
under the pencil, it will be found that intel- 
ligible sentences will be written out by these 
movements. 

"There would be nothing curious in all this 
were it not for the character of these sentences 
in many instances. Expressions foreign to the 
mental habits of the operators will be found on 
the paper. Thus, the pious will be made to 
write profanely; and the profane will be sud- 
denly made instrumental in the production of 
messages which might do credit to Madame 
Guyot or to Vincent de Paul. But the results 
are as various as the idiosyncracies of the oper- 
ators or mediums. Frequently answers to men- 
tal questions will be given with a directness that 
leaves no doubt as to the intelligence of the 
influence at work. 

"It must not be supposed that the 'little 
plank* will be equally communicative under 
the fingers of all. In the majority of cases it 



184 Spirit Life 

refuses to move. The failures are very numer- 
ous. Possibly not more than ten out of a hun- 
dred persons in a mixed assemblage would be 
found, through whom the phenomena would 
take place; and in these hundred there might 
possibly be one who would prove a good 
medium. Such a one will soon discard the 
planchette as of no use in the production of 
phenomena far more extraordinary than any 
got by its aid. 

"Why cannot one person cause it to move 
as well as another? Why does it sometimes 
utterly and ignominiously fail when those are 
present who have the strongest desire to witness 
its movements, and when those who are sup- 
posed to influence its movements share in this 
desire ? The attempt or design to carefully and 
methodically investigate and study the phe- 
nomenon appears to arrest it. In some fam- 
ilies a lady, or a child even, stands in such 
relation to the instrument as to cause it to 
move by passing it at a considerable distance. 
It seems full of impatience to work when such 
persons are in the house ; and it will write, leap, 
and run about as if impelled by irresistible 
impulse. It has occurred when such a family 
has invited one or more ladies or gentlemen to 



Spirit Life 185 

an investigation of its performances, and they 
have come, that the results have been frivolous 
and unsatisfactory. A calm, philosophical, 
careful man is not likely to become convinced 
of the reality of this class of phenomena from 
such exhibitions." 

An explanation of these things as common 
then as "mind reading" is for clairvoyance now 
was that they were "due to animal magnetism." 

"Of course," wrote Doctor Nichols, editor 
of the Boston Journal of Chemistry, "such dec- 
larations must come from the unlearned or 
unscientific, as science recognizes no such force 
or principle in nature as animal magnetism. 
It is very convenient to have a term to apply 
in explanation among the crowd, although it 
may be entirely unmeaning and empirical. 
Electricity offers no explanation ; neither does 
magnetism, as at present understood. Chem- 
ical laws and principles are appealed to in vain 
for a solution, and as regards 'odic' force, we 
have not the slightest knowledge of what it is." 

It is almost disconcerting now to look back 
upon the extent, the savagery, of the dispute 
that raged over and around the antics of this 



186 Spirit Life 

spiritistic cut-up. Learned men and great 
newspapers grew hot, became impolite, rolled 
each other with scandalous disregard of the 
amenities. Science would none of it. Believers 
were militant. Out of the ruckus came this 
much good: 

A tendency developed among the grave and 
reverend to treat the phenomena as evidence, 
in their kind, of the presence of an influence 
not commonly recognized in superior circles, 
yet worthy of attention as possibly leading to- 
ward a domain of knowledge new at least to 
the science of the age. Doctor Nichols wrote 
candidly that "thousands, from the strange and 
unusual character of the phenomena, have been 
driven to a belief in their supernatural origin, 
and the unfortunate delusion has spread 
throughout the civilized world. We incline to 
think exaggerated views are entertained re- 
specting the competency of scientific men to 
shed light upon the subject. The key to the 
mystery must be f ound before any reliable solu- 
tion is reached . . . Enough has been observed 
to lead to the conclusion that there is one power, 
impulse, or force, in nature, regarding the char- 
acter of which mankind are totally in the dark. 



Spirit Life 187 

. . . If the phenomena are ever explained, they 
will be found to be due to a blending of the 
psychological and physical endowments of the 
human organization, acting under certain laws 
entirely dissimilar to any now known or under- 
stood." 

Such a blending has at times been disclosed 
since Doctor Nichols' day, but the phenomena 
then under observation have sunken to insig- 
nificance — as phenomena — because the plan- 
chette or ouija cannot command the serious 
attention of any mind of more than fourth rate 
inferior quality. It belongs in what might be 
called the rough house of spiritism, with all 
other pieces of furniture that are used for sim- 
ilar or related purposes. Excarnates of low 
degree and slow progression find amusement in 
fooling credulous incarnates of or even a little 
better than their own kind, by means of it. But 
it is hard to imagine a developed intelligence, 
excarnate and drawing away from material 
levels, turning back for no better purpose than 
to shove a shingle around a table to amuse 
or instruct a group of perfect strangers, or even 
a lone individual now and then who would be 
looking for light in other, more promising ways 



188 Spirit Life 

if his or her desires were above the level of mere 
curiosity. That is the reason why ouija board 
communications are usually so like the bar room 
badinage of those dear damp days which now, 
thanks be, are gone beyond recall. 

Of course there are in the next stage intel- 
lectual oddities of the variety known here as 
nuts, and these though respectable may not be 
above crowding in with any sort of wobblies for 
a chance to edge along a few words now and 
then. But one of us mortals seeking light with 
a ouija board might about as well take a dark 
lantern to a coal hole in the middle of a moon- 
less night looking for a black cat that is not 
there, for all he is like to get. 



MANIFESTATIONS 

Under this designation may be grouped all 
those phenomena which appear to upset natural 
law. They seem to be effects proceeding from 
hidden causes ; and invariably they operate upon 
material objects or substances. 

When they occur in the presence or through 
the agency of a "sensitive" or of a skilled jug- 
gler they may be dismissed on suspicion. When 
they come of themselves they are sufficiently 
puzzling to be put in the phenomenal class — 
at least on probation. 

The value underlying the story here immedi- 
ately following lies in the character and stand- 
ing of the people involved. It appeared first in 
a book written by the Rev. Charles Beecher, 
brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and of Henry Ward 
Beecher. It was written to Doctor Beecher by 
Prof. Austin Phelps, D.D., of Andover Col- 
lege. The group thus named made a deep 
impression on the mind of America in the nine- 
teenth century. It was the most powerful 

189 



190 Spirit Life 

single influence in directing the thought of the 
north toward those events that brought on the 
civil war, swept away slavery, recreated the 
nation, and made possible the almost miracu- 
lous development that has given us dominance 
in the world. The names are part of our his- 
tory. 

Professor Phelps' letter is given in full: 

"The circumstances to which you refer took 
place when I was just commencing at Andover, 
and at a time when I was much pressed with 
official duties. They covered a period of seven 
months. 

"My father was residing in Stratford, Con- 
necticut, with his second wife, who also had 
several children by a former husband. She 
was at the time in ill health from the first ap- 
proaches of the malady (which we did not 
understand at the time) by which she was sub- 
sequently bereft of reason. 

"My father had paid little attention to such 
matters previous to his coming to Stratford, 
except that he had tried to mesmerize my 
brother, who suffered from heart disease, and 
had afforded him some relief. The phenomena 
of spirit rapping he had only noticed as items 



Spirit Life 191 

of news in the papers of the day. The greater 
part of the strange occurrences did not come 
under my own observation, but were narrated 
to me by him, in whose testimony I confide as 
much as in my own. I cannot pretend to give 
dates, or the precise order of events, but some 
of the main facts as they occur to my recol- 
lection. 

"The first thing that took place of an un- 
usual nature was on a certain Sunday. The 
family, including the servants, according to 
custom, had been to church, leaving the house 
locked up. On returning they found the front 
door wide open. The first thought was that 
robbers had been there. No signs, however, 
of their presence appeared, on searching the 
rooms, until they came to my father's room, 
and there they found three full suits of his 
clothes stuffed out with old clothes, etc., and 
laid out side by side upon the floor, with boots, 
hat, etc., like a row of corpses, somewhat as I 
have seen them after a railroad collision. This 
seemed very strange; but the general impres- 
sion was that it might be a roguish trick of the 
boys, or of someone unknown. 

"In the course of the day, as my father was 
walking across the parlor, no other person be- 



192 Spirit Life 

ing in the room, a key was thrown from behind 
over his head, and fell on the floor at his feet. 
He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Soon 
after a nail was thrown in the same way. In 
the evening, as the family was sitting together, 
suddenly a turnip fell from the ceiling in their 
midst. Then they began to hear little raps in 
various directions. They tried to trace them 
up, but could not. 

"Things went on for some time. Noises were 
heard in different parts of the house. At the 
dinner table, spoons would fly up out of the 
vessel and fall upon the table. The forks would 
do the same. Once my father took the spoons, 
and the servant put them in the closet and 
locked the door, and brought him the key. In 
the space of ten minutes the spoons were back 
on the table again, without any visible agency. 
Father then took them himself, put them in 
the closet and locked the door, and in ten min- 
utes, without seeing them come, they were on 
the table again. He unlocked the door; they 
were not there. 

"Meanwhile the knockings, etc., continued 
day and night, and many of the neighbors hear- 
ing what was going on, began to come in to see 



Spirit Life 193 

and hear. As a specimen, a thing like this took 
place : 

"One day at dinner a package of six or eight 
silver spoons were all at once taken and doubled 
up — bent double by no visible agency. My 
father had placed them in the closet, locked 
the door, and kept the key himself. A sister 
of his was there at the time on a visit, and a 
neighbor came in inquiring about what she had 
heard. The sister got the key, went to get the 
spoons, unlocked the door, and there lay the 
spoons as straight as before, with no dent, or 
crease, or sign of having been bent. This is 
only a specimen. There were dozens of such 
events. 

"Of course there was much excitement and 
talk, and all sorts of opinions were expressed. 
Many most unjustly attributed it to my 
father's wife or her children. It was known 
that she did not like Stratford, and was desir- 
ous of moving to Philadelphia. It was also 
noticed that the phenomena were in some way 
connected with her and her children, rather 
than with my father and his children. In mod- 
ern parlance, they were the mediums. 

"She was a Christian woman, a member of 
the Episcopal church, and much grieved at the 



194 Spirit Life 

charge, and denied it in the most, solemn man- 
ner. Indeed the whole visitation was made a 
subject of daily prayer in the family. And all 
cognizant with the facts are perfectly certain 
that neither she nor her children were con- 
sciously implicated. If they were mediums it 
was by no wish or will of their own. It was 
more like a case of possession. 

"For example, one of the most startling oc- 
currences was this : One day my father heard 
one of the children crying, out in the yard (it 
was the boy whose presence had been most fol- 
lowed by the knockings, etc.). The boy was 
found up in an apple tree, tied fast with a rope, 
in a situation where it seemed impossible he 
could have gotten by himself, or by any human 
agency. 

"For some time after these things com- 
menced, even after the idea of communicating 
by the alphabet had occurred to him, my father 
resolved to have nothing to do with it. But 
at length he became weary, and resolved to try. 
Pursuing the usual course, as he had seen it 
described, he met with a ready affirmative re- 
sponse (three raps) , and wrote down intelligent 
sentences. 



Spirit Life 195 

"The first question of course was 'Who are 
you?' To this various answers were given, 
sometimes one name, sometimes another, all of 
parties deceased, but most frequently came the 
name of a brother of Mrs. Phelps. The next 
inquiry was as to his object, or what was the 
matter with him. 

"His answer was in substance: 1. That he 
was in hell. 2. That Mrs. Phelps had been 
cheated in the settlement of an estate by a per- 
son named D'S — . My father not recognizing 
the name, which was French, asked his wife if 
she knew such a person. She said no, and asked 
how the name was spelled. He spelled it, and 
she said: 

' 'Oh, you pronounced it wrong. It was 
D'S — ,' giving the correct pronunciation; and 
she remembered there was such a person— a 
head clerk in a firm that had been in some way 
concerned in the settlement. 

"My father went to Philadelphia and made 
an investigation of the facts. He found evi- 
dence sufficient to confirm the suspicion of 
fraud excited by the communications, but noth- 
ing sufficient to convict in a court of justice; 
nothing, in short, resulting in rectifying the 
settlement. 



196 Spirit Life 

"On one occasion my father was sitting in a 
small anteroom, about five feet square, at a 
little desk where he kept his accounts. He was 
alone. An incessant rapping being kept up, 
he at length said : 

"'What do you want r 

"And on using the alphabet the answer was 
spelled out: 

" 'Put your hand under the table.' 

"He did so, and his hand was grasped by a 
human hand, warm and soft like mine. 

"At my father's request, I yyent to Stratford 
to see and examine into the case. I went with 
strong prepossessions, having heard what was 
said about my stepmother, — that it was in some 
way contrived by her and her children. I was 
soon entirely undeceived, and convinced that I 
had been unjust to her, and that she and her 
children were entirely innocent of any com- 
plicity. 

"The phenomena that I witnessed were not 
so striking as some my father told me of. 
I was accompanied by a brother of my 
father, Doctor Phelps, who was far from being 
credulous or visionary — in fact tending rather 
to materialism than to belief in the super- 
natural. 



Spirit Life 197 

"We occupied the same room, and slept 
soundly until midnight, when we were awak- 
ened by what seemed like a deep sigh breathed 
through the keyhole, and repeated several times 
quite loudly. Then there was a tremendous 
hammering outside our door, in the hall. We 
got up, struck a light, went into the next room, 
where father slept, and asked him what the 
noise was. He answered: 

'You know as well as I do; judge for your- 
selves.' 

"We went and examined, and found on the 
banister marks and dents, as if it had been 
beaten with a hard substance. We went up- 
stairs and found the servants' doors locked, all 
the children asleep, and no evidence whatever 
to connect the noise with any of them. 

"The noise continued at intervals till morn- 
ing. The next day we searched the house 
thoroughly, and found nothing except that in 
the attic was a suit of father's clothes stuffed 
as before described, and stretched out on the 
floor. 

"The next night the noises were still more 
abundant. 'Let us follow the noise,' I said. 'I 
will go inside the door, you outside.' 






198 Spirit Life 

"We followed till we came to the apartment 
of the oldest daughter. It was in the evening, 
about nine o'clock. With her permission I 
stepped inside the room, and the doctor staid 
outside. The knocking came on the door be- 
tween us. 

"Said I, 'Doctor, the knocking is on the out- 
side of the door.' 

No,' said he, 'it is on the inside/ 
The young lady was in bed, covered up, and 
out of reach of the door. We examined the 
panel, and found dents where it had been 
struck. Just then, as I stepped back into the 
room, a hairbrush was thrown, apparently from 
the door, and fell at my feet. It was a most 
inexplicable thing. 

"I omitted to say that a serious feature of 
the business was the burning of my father's 
barn in broad daylight, when no person was- in 
the building or near it, so far as known. 

"One thing I saw, bearing on that matter, in 
the course of our investigations: One of the 
children slept in a cot bed in my father's room, 
and one evening we saw a smoke rising from 
that bed. We turned up the bed clothes, lifted 
up the mattress, and found underneath a news- 
paper ignited, which blazed up. 



a t, 



<< c 



a 



tc 



Spirit Life 199 

"The general character of the responses was 
rather low. Many of them were simply ridicul- 
ous. For instance: When the alleged spirit 
seemed to be in an unhappy state, we asked : 

Can we do anything for you?' 
'Answer, 'No/ 

What do you want? What would you 
like?' 

'Answer, 'a piece of pumpkin pie/ 
Many communications came just as ridicul- 
ous. Throughout the whole thing there was 
nothing of any importance — -no religious truth. 
He said, indeed, he was in hell, but the idea 
seemed to be he would get out hereafter; there 
was a general notion of progress, and all would 
come out right — some time; there was a good 
deal of truth in the Bible, but a good deal of 
nonsense, too ; and he seemed, to use a common 
expression, to be specially down on St. Paul. 

"The idea of Atonement seemed to be 
specially distasteful, even repulsive. Christ, 
they seemed to think, was much the same 
as other men. There were, however, some 
that professed to be good spirits, who 
said they were there to keep the bad ones 
in order. But on the whole the development of 



200 Spirit Life 

thought was characterized by a consummate 
pettiness. There was no object worthy of reve- 
lation. 

"In the retrospect, my father subsequently 
said, his religious convictions were not at all 
affected; he still held to the faith of his child- 
hood, with the exception that his views of scrip- 
tural demonology were more distinct; and his 
belief strengthened that spirits, good and bad, 
do have access to us, and that they are in con- 
flict. 

"For my own part, I could not account for 
what I saw, and heard from reliable witnesses, 
on any other theory but that of spirits, though 
I never have gone quite so far as to admit that 
any of those concerned were good spirits. 

"That deceitful spirits can assume to be good 
is plain. And the most probable hypothesis, 
until science can prove something else, is that 
such was the fact here." 



TELEPATHY 

Late in 1875 there appeared from out the 
wheatfields of Iowa a bland young man named 
somethingor other Brown, a plump and pleasing 
person, viridically embodying innocence. He 
was steered and spoken for by a local lawyer 
named Robinson, who knew me and none other 
newspaper man. Mr. Robinson said Mr. 
Brown could tell what any other fellow hap- 
pened to be thinking about. "He is a mind 
reader," said Robinson, and offered to make 
him demonstrate. 

I was a good enough poker player to know 
that there were plenty of fellows infesting the 
town who could read the minds of other fellows 
and get money thereby. I am not ready to 
deny that I myself had acquired various sums 
in the little friendly games we used to have, by 
reading the other fellows' minds through their 
faces. Therefore this mind reading thing did 
not excite me. But Robinson said enough to 
indicate a story, and I sent him to the city 

201 



202 Spirit Life 

editor. Next morning we played up Brown 
in a mixture of odic force, magnetism, and a 
few other ingredients that nobody could under- 
stand. 

The city editor had turned Brown and his 
pilot over to Jim Chisholm, a whimsical soul 
with a perception of character, a quaint humor, 
and no illusions. Jim worked upon Paul's 
advice to prove all things and hold fast that 
which is good. He had given the evening to 
Brown and Robinson, had found Robinson was 
out for free publicity, and had shoved him over 
the side and attached himself to Brown whom 
he found incapable of reading much of any- 
thing, minds least of all, but who had shown 
him a trick that was new and perhaps not vain. 
Brown could find anything you might hide, and 
do it blindfolded, though kept out of the room 
or even the house while the article was selected 
and the hiding done. 

The story Jim wrote made quite a stir. Rob- 
inson was quick to grab the chance. He got on 
the blind side of the Union Park Congrega- 
tional Church people, made a deposit of hire for 
the use of their preach-hall, and advertised a 
mind-reading show. Jim stuck by the job and 
did it well. Incidentally he was cultivated by 



Spirit Life 203 

Robinson with sinister intent, and taken into 
confidence, consenting to be "a plant" under 
Robinson's entreaty to help out with an audi- 
ence that might rattle honest young Brown by 
its size and possibly its incredulity. He wanted 
to pull off at least one sure-fire test. 

MIND BEADING BY AGREEMENT 

The show was a startling success. Brown 
seemed able to find anything, either by going 
straight to where it was hidden, or by saying 
where and what it was. 

Jim's personal case was the big feature. He 
lived nearby and nearly everyone knew him. 
His agreed article was a gold-bodied pencil, in 
an upper pocket of his vest. When Brown 
described and located it, and Jim stood up and 
admitted both, there was what the other papers 
called a Profound Sensation. All Brown 
(through Robinson) had required in this and 
other tests was that the testee keep his mind 
on the object and its place. Jim was fair, how- 
ever, and admitted to me that many if not most 
of the finding was genuine, even though his own 
were previously determined. Brown, he said, 
had some undiscovered power up his sleeve. 



204 Spirit Life 

During the afternoon friend Robinson 
turned up with a black eye. A regular show- 
man had seen in Brown a chance to make big 
money, and in manual combat had won him 
from Robinson, who had no contract but stood 
upon his rights under the law of discovery. In- 
stead of having the showman impounded upon 
a charge of assault, he had flown to apathetic 
newspaper offices with the saga of his wrongs. 
Robinson had ceased to be news, save for his 
black eye, which drew a few merry quips. The 
showman meanwhile was on his way to New 
York, escorting Brown. 

THE CAPTURE OF NEW YORK 

Brown had New York interested from the 
start. "Mind reading" got the front page on 
its merits or demerits, and everybody went 
chasing after it. 

Of course, stage magicians had been doing 
pretty much the same thing in their own dear 
little artful way for years and years and years, 
but all their work was within tight boundaries, 
whereas Brown's was in the open and undoubt- 
edly what it professed to be. Schopenheauer 
had conceded such gifts and (grudgingly 
enough) a good deal more, as far back as 1850 ; 



Spirit Life 205 

but Schopenheauer had addressed the intelli- 
gentzia, whereas Brown went over to they that 
gape and rub the elbow at any opaque innova- 
tion — the multitudinous unmeritable many. 

Here was the beginning of mind reading, 
called Telepathy by scientists when they began 
to look into though not through it. I do not 
recall what became of Brown. He dropped 
out of sight, because others came along who 
knew not Iowa, neither Robinson; nor black- 
ened eyes. The first and second of these trailers 
were Bishop and Cumberland. 

THE SAD CASE OF BISHOP 

Brown had not always required physical 
contact with a subject whose mind he was read- 
ing. As I look back to it, he seems to me to 
have had a slight touch of clairvoyance. Bishop 
had clairvoyance in greater degree, but not 
much of it at that. I knew him well and liked 
him much. He had a keen mind, an open man- 
ner, and he was straight. He was subject to 
seizures of coma, quite like catalepsy ; or rather 
suspended animation, for his heart would stop 
beating. Physicians puzzled over him. His 
managers played up to their curiosity, and this 
erroneous exploitation cost him his life. 



206 Spirit Life 

In one of his seizures they sawed off the top 
of his skull and took out his brain to see what it 
was made of and what made its wheels go 
round. They were disconcerted to find it quite 
normal, which put the j oke on them ; but Bishop 
himself would appear to have been annoyed, 
for he never came out of it. 

When the undertaker supervened, he found 
in one of the pockets a note written by Bishop 
asking that if he were found apparently dead 
he be not disturbed — that he would "come to" 
without fail and without medical aid. His 
mother was aware of this, but unhappily she 
was not there at the time. She sued the doc- 
tors, but somehow they squirmed from under. 
Nothing was done about it. 

MUSCLE READERS 

Bishop and Cumberland required contact 
with their subjects. They were expert in de- 
tecting muscular movements, even the slightest, 
that would tell them whether they were going 
toward or away from a hidden or a thought-of 
thing or place. In fact they were muscle 
readers. But they did enough that looked mys- 
terious to attract investigation by the Society 
for Psychical Research, which was then in an 



Spirit Life 207 

early stage of its career ; and the Society after a 
fair examination arrived at the truth and ex- 
ploded the whole show so far as concerned its 
earlier claim of supernormality. 

Since then "thought transference" has 
reached out on one hand for rational explana- 
tion, and on the other has comfortably settled 
down as a "parlor" (what a word!) amusement 
at evening gatherings of the genteel select. 
In this latter application it is not half bad. 

DO YOUR OWN MIND EEADING 

In a group of say a dozen people, one is 
blindfolded, and may be sent from the room. 
The other eleven, preferably though not neces- 
sarily sitting in the dark, agree upon an object, 
and "concentrate" thought upon it. Then the 
blindfold subject is brought in. Nothing is 
said; but if the concentration is real and the 
subject holds his own mind quiescent, he will 
find himself impelled to move in one or another 
direction. The chances are he will fumble 
about for a few moments, then go straight to 
the object, and lay hands upon it. Then every- 
body will say "Ah !" And that's all. 

All, but enough — and more than any inves- 
tigator has yet been able to clear up, for 



208 Spirit Life 

telepathy as such has firmly repudiated any- 
thing that might be called spiritistic, as well 
as anything in the nature of intelligence trans- 
mitted through etheral contact. It admits 
Suggestion, but offers nothing that would dis- 
close the method by which Suggestion operates 
toward results obtained. 

WHAT IS TELEPATHY? 

The late James H. Hyslop treated the matter 
at large and with nearest approach to clarity, 
but left it where he found it. Mr. Hyslop was 
a Ph. D., an LL. D., and Secretary of the 
American Society for Psychical Research — an 
open-minded, earnest seeker after such truth 
as his lights enabled him to find on the hither 
side of sanity. His book on "Psychical Research 
and Survival" says "there is no scientific 
ground for using either vibrations or wireless 
analogies for making telepathy intelligible, 
whether direct or indirect. It may be that 
such processes are facts. I do not know, and 
science has produced no evidence for the fact. 
The term telepathy thus remains only as a 
name for facts and is not an explanation." 

In an article written for and appearing in 
The North American Review the same author 



Spirit Life 209 

says "the spiritistic theory, in so far as it is 
Dased on phenomena of personal identity, is> 
practically intelligible and appeals to web 
known laws of nature. Telepathy is an appear 
to the unknown and thus violates the first con 
dition of a scientific explanation. We do not 
know any process whatever in connection with 
the phenomena of telepathy and so can not use 
it for scientific explanations. It is quite other- 
wise with the spiritistic theory where the facts 
illustrate personal identity. 

"In the first place, we explain the actions of 
a living person by the action of consciousness 
on the organism. In conversation with a man, 
we interpret his vocal statements, not as blind, 
unconscious and mechanical actions, but as evi- 
dence of associated intelligence. Wherever 
the evidence is sufficient, we infer intelligence 
in connection with certain facts. 

"Now, that particular person with whom we 
were conversing dies and his body dissolves. 
No more actions occur in connection with his 
bodily organism from which I can infer the 
continuance of that consciousness. But sup- 
pose that I go to another living organism whose 
consciousness never knew the facts about my 
friend, and the incidents of his last conversation 



210 Spirit Life 

are all detailed over again to me, why should I 
not suppose or infer that the same conscious- 
ness is instigating them that I would infer with 
the living organism? On the other hand, the 
proved fact of telepathy, whatever the process, 
would make this possible, assuming that con- 
sciousness actually did survive and only awaited 
favorable conditions for communication, and 
we might legitimately suppose that the facts 
were evidence of the survival, without any ap- 
peal to a process to account for them or to make 
them intelligible. 

"When we say 'spirit' in such a situation we 
do not mean a quasi-material form, as usually 
imagined, but we mean the continuance of the 
consciousness or stream of consciousness which 
we once knew, and now infer, to explain certain 
movements and actions of a given organism. 
We are not setting up an unknown process, 
such as telepathy is. We are inferring the same 
mental states that we knew operative at a 
former time, and, if in the living it be the nature 
or the capacity of consciousness to cause move- 
ments or sensory pictures in the mind, why 
may not the same power be active after death; 
and when a suitable organism or set of condi- 
tions is found in the living, why may not the 



Spirit Life 21 1 

same consciousness produce the same effects? 
In both the conception of the process and the 
appeal to telepathy is to the wholly unknown 
using the known to explain the facts. The 
appeal to persistence of consciousness we are 
as a process. The facts are nothing but mental 
states and as such are not special types of 
phenomena of a special type different in nature 
absence of normal stimuli that is striking. 

"The consequence is that we shall not be in 
any position to understand telepathic coinci- 
dences until we ascertain the special process 
by which they are produced. If telepathically 
induced mental states represented individual 
phenomena individually considered. It is the 
from ordinary mental states, the discovery of a 
special process would not be so important 
Ajiy other associated event or agent might 
juffice to explain it. But telepathy is but a 
name for a coincidence between phenomena 
which, individually and in normal conditions, 
are perfectly familiar, and it is the coincidence 
that is unusual, not the mental state. Conse- 
quently we must know what the process is that 
establishes the coincidence, to understand it. 

"But it is precisely this process that is totally 
unknown. So far as we know, the process 



212 Spirit Life 

might be the action of spirits as messengers for 
carrying the thoughts of one living person to 
another. We have no evidence that any such 
thing occurs, and it would involve a complicated 
process to effect it in this way. The habit of 
science is to take the direct course for explana- 
tion instead of the indirect, unless the evidence 
points to the indirect one. Hence, I do not 
refer to the possibility of spirit agency in 
telepathy as if it were a fact, but only to exhibit 
our ignorance of the real process, and it is that 
ignorance which forbids the use of 'telepathy' 
to explain anything whatever. It remains a 
name for facts which still seek an explanation. 

"Let us then summarize the state of 
telepathy as an hypothesis : 

"1. It is nothing but a name for facts, for 
mental coincidences, excluding chance, guess- 
ing, and normal sense perception. 

"2. It is not a casual explanation of anything 
whatever, even of mental coincidences. We 
know nothing about the process involved, 
whether 'brain waves,' etheral undulations, or 
other conditions exist to make transmission pos- 
sible ; and even if they did exist the case would 
not be any more intelligible. 



Spirit Life 213 

"3. We do not know whether the process of 
transmission is direct between the living or in- 
volves some third agent to carry the message. 
Our knowledge is so limited in the matter that 
this hypothesis is as good as any to account for 
the facts. 

"4. The only telepathy for which we have 
any scientific evidence whatever is connected 
with the present active mental states of the sup- 
posed agent and those of the percipient. There 
is no scientific evidence that it is primarily or 
exclusively a subconscious affair initiated and 
carried out by the percipient. The evidence 
connects it with the apparent stimulus of the 
agent's thought. 

"5. The telepathy which assumes that the 
percipient selects desired information from the 
subconsciousness of a person present has no evi- 
dence whatever, scientific or otherwise, for 
itself. Yet this has been assumed in order to 
eliminate other hypotheses. 

"6. The still further extended telepathy 
which assumes that a percipient can at any time 
gain access by subconscious action to the sub- 
consciousness of any person at a distance, or of 
all living persons, and select what is necessary 
for its purpose, has absolutely no evidence, 



214 Spirit Life 

scientific or otherwise, for its assumed action. 
It has nothing but the imagination of people 
who have no scientific knowledge to support it. 
It will be conceivable when it produces at least 
an iota of evidence in its favor." 

Mr. Hyslop left the matter thus, having gone 
as far toward an understanding of it as 
anyone yet has been able to go. It might as 
well be added as a fourth to the three things 
that Solomon gave up as being too much for 
him. Or handed over to the fourth dimension. 

TELEPATHY AND HYPNOSIS 

TK, author of that strange work, "The Har- 
monic Series" (Indo- American Book Com- 
pany, Chicago, 1913. Florence Huntley, edi- 
tor), in treating of the Physiology of Hyp- 
nosis, says everyone who is at all familiar with 
the processes of telepathy will understand how 
it is possible to convey an exact impression, or 
thought, or impulse of the will, to the conscious- 
ness of another, quite independently of the 
physical senses, but that independent telepathy 
must not be confused with the hypnotic proc- 
ess, for it is no more related to hypnotism than 
it is to the ordinary process of telepathy. He 
proceeds : 



Spirit Life 215 

"It should be remembered that an impulse 
of the mind formulated in a thought is a wholly 
different thing from the words in which that 
thought is clothed. It requires the spoken 
words to convey an exact thought from one 
mind to another through the instrumentality 
of the physical auditory nerve. In like man- 
ner, it requires the printed letters and words 
to convey the thought of a writer to the mind 
of his reader through the agency of the physical 
optic nerve. Although words are necessary 
in both instances, nevertheless the words them- 
selves do not constitute the thought in either 
case. They do not even constitute any part 
of the thought. 

"In the first instance they are merely a com- 
bination of physical sounds so arranged and 
modulated as to convey to the listener's con- 
sciousness through his physical sense of hearing 
the thought in the mind of the speaker. In 
the other way they are only a set of physical 
signs so arranged as to convey the same thought 
from one mind to another through the physical 
sense of sight. In both cases they are simply 
used as instruments or vehicles for carrying 
thoughts from one intelligence to another. 



216 Spirit Life 

"Moreover, it is a scientific fact which anyone 
may demonstrate in course of time, under 
proper instruction, that the impulse of the 
human soul formulated into a definite thought, 
is a force. This force, under proper conditions, 
may be impressed upon the consciousness of 
another intelligent soul without the aid of words 
either spoken, written or printed. This may 
be done without the use of any physical sensory 
organs at all. It may be accomplished through 
spiritual agencies exclusively. And the chan- 
nels through which this may be accomplished 
are spiritual sensory organs in both number 
and character, except that they operate upon a 
higher plane of refinement and vibratory ac- 
tivity." 



MATERIALIZATION SEANCES 

There is no other phase of manifestation so 
pliable to abuse, so abounding in deliberate im- 
posture, as that which is encountered in mate- 
rializing seances where the cabinet is employed. 
The author of The Harmonic Series treats of 
it in a manner at once so compact and so clear 
that I prefer compressing his category to 
formulating a statement of my own. 

In describing the method or operations of 
materialization it is common to speak of "gen- 
erating" the magnetism by which the stuff or 
material of an apparition coheres and is made 
plastic. The term is erroneous, since nothing 
is generated, but everything is accumulated or 
assembled. Therefore in what here follows I 
have used the word "accumulated" to keep the 
description within the facts. 

Our Harmonic author admits or assumes 
genuine spirit direction in these phenomena. 
He says the intelligences who understand and 
direct the processes first throw the medium 

217 



2i8 Spirit Life 

into a state of profound trance, and then em- 
ploy "the vital and spiritual organisms," in con- 
junction with outside elemental conditions, to 
produce visible forms. The processional order 
he states in this order: 

(a) Every living, human physical organism 
is a natural accumulation of animal magnetism 
and vital energy. In this respect it is closely 
analagous in action to an electric dynamo. 

(b) During the physically negative or 
passive hours of sleep, this human dynamo is 
constantly engaged in accumulating magnetism 
and vital energy with which to propel the 
machinery of the physical body during the wak- 
ing hours. The moment an individual wakens 
from sleep he begins to draw upon this accumu- 
lated supply, and continues to do so until sleep 
once more locks the doors of the storehouse and 
prevents further escape. 

(c) Under proper conditions animal mag- 
netism is faintly visible to the physical eye. 
This may be demonstrated by anyone who will 
observe the following suggestions: 

* Arrange a perfectly black background. 



* See elsewhere in this book the New York Sun account of 
Poctor Felkin's experiments. 



Spirit Life 219 

Then, in the twilight of evening, have a strong, 
healthy man take a position four to six feet in 
front of this background. Take a position 
yourself at a distance of twenty to forty feet, 
so that his form will be outlined against the dark 
background. Now let your eyes rest steadily 
upon his form a few moments, while your at- 
tention is directed to its delineation against the 
background. In a short time you will begin 
to see a faint radiation of light surrounding the 
form. The longer you look the more distinct 
it will become until the form will appear 
to be almost illuminated. "This is animal mag- 
netism and vital energy and is constantly ex- 
pended in this manner by the physical body 
during the waking hours of every individual." 

(d) It requires but a small amount of at- 
tenuated physical matter added to this physical 
magnetism to bring the compound clearly 
within the range of physical vision. 

(c) While the medium is in the deep, leth- 
argic trance state the physical body is in a nega- 
tive or passive condition. In this condition it 
gives off animal magnetism quite freely. 

(f ) While the physical body of the medium 
is thus negative, spiritual forces may be so 
applied by the intelligences operating the 



220 Spirit Life 

process as to draw off its animal magnetism and 
vital energy as rapidly as they are supplied. 

(g) The liberated animal magnetism of a 
medium may be controlled by the action of the 
will of one who understands the process by 
which it is accomplished. 

(h) When the medium is in a state of deep 
trance the "spiritual" controls withdraw from 
the physical body of the medium all the animal 
magnetism and vital energy possible. To this 
they are able to add a sufficient quantity of at- 
tenuated matter drawn from the surrounding 
elements to bring the whole compound into 
view. 

A MATERIALIZED BODY 

"Spiritual" controls who understand mate- 
rialization are able to use the medium's physical 
body as a fashion form, so to say, and to invest 
it with this materializing substance in such 
manner as to transform it into representation 
of many personalities, clothing and all. But 
this sort of impersonation is sometimes prac- 
ticed by unscrupulous controls, to the confusion 
of the medium when (as often happens) unbe- 
lievers rudely interfere. At its best it is not 
very nice. At its worst it is repulsive. 



Spirit Life 221 

Apparitions thus induced give off a faintly 
noisome odor. Mr. Perry, of whom I have 
related that he believed he had seen the ghost of 
his sister at such a seance, told me it "smelled 
like a grave," a simile more blunt than apt, for 
I doubt whether he ever had smelled a grave or 
was in any way acquainted with fragrances or 
stenches elaborated there ; and I can bear testi- 
mony that nothing in the atmosphere of mate- 
rializing seance rooms could by even the dullest 
nose be mistaken for spicy waftures from 
Araby the blest. 

The whole business is stuffy, unpleasant, and 
even when it is genuine, uninstructive. It never 
gets you anywhere. Its appeal to the bereaved 
is disturbing because it is so meagre, so tantaliz- 
ing; to the merely curious or credulous it is 
dangerous, because it beckons toward quick- 
sands. Where it is true, it is a bit of dubious 
value set in a wilderness of deception. 

One shrinks from describing the deliberate 
trickery to which nearly all materializing 
seances are so widely open, at so little risk to the 
performers, who play with the most sacred 
affections, and are without compunction in 
tearing the heart of a mother, or opening 
anew the wounds of a widow. Trust the exhib- 



222 Spirit Life 

i 
f 

itor for knowing at least two or three of the 
easiest victims in his audience! He is master 
of the ceremonies. His functions are much like 
those of the lookout at a faro table, with this 
outstanding difference: He frames the game 
before it is played. The lookout merely watches 
the play as it goes forward. 

Once in Boston I sat near a woman who was 
outspoken in her anxiety to see again a child of 
four or thereabout, not long lost. She sat with 
touching patience while a dismal succession of 
hand-made spooks dispensed consolation or 
disappointment to the others. At last, when 
the master of the ceremonies thought her ripe 
enough, a voice from the cabinet announced the 
arrival of a spirit baby who wanted to see her 
mamma — giving the woman's initials. Was 
there someone present who owned those initials? 

There was — (there always is). The whole 
force of the poor woman's being went out in 
that acknowledgment. 

Then along the floor, from between the cur- 
tains, stole a little luminous cloud. About mid- 
way of the intervening space it stopped, and a 
whisper came, 

"Mamma!" 



Spirit Life 223 

"Restrain yourself, madame," spoke the con- 
trol in the cabinet, a deep, masculine voice — the 
medium was a woman, a fat woman with two 
voices, one ridiculously high and thin for one so 
thick as she, the other barytone. "Restrain 
yourself. Your child is gathering strength." 

The woman got herself in hand, and waited, 
and the little luminosity grew up from the floor 
— jerkily — until it was maybe two feet in 
height, luminous throughout, or rather lambent ; 
and pulsing. 

"Mamma!" in a weak whisper. "Does 00 
know me, Mamma?" 

With a choking cry the woman stretched out 
her hands and would have gone to her knees 
toward the figure. "My baby! O, my baby!" 

The figure collapsed on the spot where it 
seemed to stand and with a quick, whirling 
movement vanished into the cabinet, leaving a 
faint trail that shimmered and faded out. 
The woman pitched over in a dead faint. 
Someone struck a light, and there was con- 
fusion. 

The master of ceremonies, standing outside 
the cabinet and near it, hastily drew the cur- 
tains wide. There sat the medium alone, 
apparently in a trance. 



224 Spirit Life 

w 
The master of the ceremonies snapped his 

fingers before her face and spoke sharply, 

" Wake up!" 

Slowly the fat old thing opened her eyes, 
shivered, rubbed them, looked dazed, and asked 
in that piccolo voice of hers, 

"What's the matter ?" 

Nothing was the matter. That baby act was 
what in vaudeville is known as A Chaser. It 
was intended to terminate the show. 

The baby was a mass of floss rubbed with 
phosphorus, loosely wrapped around one end 
of a wire. It was shaken out or twisted small 
with ease, part of a kit of tools, as you might 
call them, served from and withdrawn behind 
a nicely hinged baseboard of the wall back of 
the cabinet. I did not need to look. The con- 
trivance was old in the cabinet-ghost trade. 

Nor did I feel called upon to say anything. 
But when I was leaving I found opportunity 
to wink at the master of the ceremonies — bad 
manners, but I couldn't help it. He winked at 
me, too, and we smiled at each other the smile 
of perfect understanding. The brute! 



SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'S 
ATTITUDE 

In apparatus and preparation, save for the 
phosphorus, this seance was much of a kind 
with those which floated in memory down the 
years, discredited until they reached and en- 
veloped the wonder-sense of Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle, who put them on paper and landed them 
on the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, 
who innocently passed them along to our Amer- 
ican public, unknowing their disreputable 
origin. Those old seances constituted the Katy 
tKing case, a matter of some forty years ago. 

The Katy King case raised a big smoke for 
quite a while before it blew its own head off and 
dirtied everyone for miles and miles around, 
like a mud volcano. It occurred in London. 
It is an obtruding item in a long catalogue of 
discouraging farces. Sir Arthur's home is in 
Sussex, the second county south of Middlesex, 
where London is. 

When I lived in London, not so very far 
back, the Katy King case was pretty sure to 
be thrown in my face whenever spiritism came 

225 



226 Spirit Life 

under discussion. It is strange a thing so fla- 
grant could persist so long, and show no signs 
of wear. It is more strange that with the facts 
so well known, such old stuff and so near him, 
it was so readily accepted by one of the ablest, 
broadest minds among all the English speaking 
peoples, the most matter-of-fact, unillusioned, 
sane people that ever lived in the tides of time. 
I wrote Sir Arthur on the subject, and he an- 
swered: 

"I have not heard of any such exposure — nor 
had Sir William Crookes. 

"My experience is that in many cases the so- 
called exposures are simply the result of want 
of knowledge on the part of the exposers as to 
the actual conditions, transfigurations, posses- 
sion, &c. This view is borne out by Schrenck 
Notzing in his research on materialization. 
Yours faithfully, A. Conan Doyle/'' 

This case should emphasize the charge of 
futility that stands against the whole material- 
izing mess. Nobody ever got any good by it. 
I'd say that much in wood type ten feet high, 
or hallo it to the reverberate hills, but I would 
not argue it. There is no issue. 



Spirit Life 227 

What is the use of bothering with cabinet 
materialization? In itself it conveys no assur- 
ance of lif e's continuity, no evidence of survival. 
Such assuring evidence can be had with cer- 
tainty by no means other than interchange of 
intelligence between those who have gone and 
those who remain, where undoubtable identifi- 
cation is established and the interchange has 
definite meaning within the bounds of reason, 
of proof, of common sense. All else is what our 
Sidney Smith would register as Carp Caviar. 



HIGHER ATTRIBUTES OF LOWER 

ANIMALS 

Anyone who really has known a dog, has 
had a dog to friend, will hesitate to accept the 
dicta of Sir Oliver Lodge and Doctor Mae- 
Dougall that "animals are purely earthly" and 
"have no hereafter." 

No instance of an intelligence at the moment 
of dissociation from the body projecting itself 
through space to the mind of a beloved friend 
is any clearer than the vision Sir Rider Hag- 
gard* had when his dog was drowning, in the 
night. 

Woven through their deep affection was a 
mental understanding that made for perfect 
companionship. The dog was given free range 
at all hours. He had gone afield one night 
with a keeper, and by some mischance had 
fallen into a turbulent little stream so suddenly 
that he lost his sense of direction and was rolled 
to death in a stretch of tumbling white water. 

*Please pronounce it "Reader," as its owner does. 

228 



Spirit Life 229 

To Sir Rider, in bed and asleep a mile away, 
the whole scene stood out, as though he were 
there in the body, with a sense of appeal so 
urgent that he waked and went toward the 
place. On the way he met the keeper, bringing 
the body home. He wrote the story, and it ap- 
peared in (I think it was) one of the Psychical 
Research publications. 

The finest, rarest attribute of soul or spirit 
is the one we know as altruism; and your dog 
is your one altruist, ready to fight for you, or 
without the slightest hesitation die for you. 
The love of a dog for the human being he has 
taken to be his master is a perfect, a selfless love. 
Nothing can annul it. Cruelty nor anything 
else can turn it aside. He grieves with you, 
is glad with you, is a calm participant in your 
content, holds by you as a Christian holds by 
the God of the Christians. 

Of all animals below the human order, he is 
the only one that has crossed the line to be a 
friend to man. If all the dogs in all the world 
were gathered into one great republic of dogs 
and one man should appear, every dog of them 
all would quit his republic on the instant, to 
follow the man. 



230 Spirit Life 

Three of the f ourf ooted creatures have made 
themselves or been made companions in man's 
domestic life: the dog, the cat and the horse. 
The cat remains a wild thing. He is with us 
for what there is in it for himself — warmth and 
food. The horse would not stay an hour if he 
knew his own strength. The dog would go to 
hell with or for you, asking nothing better. 

The power of reason is one of our most pre- 
cious properties, amounting almost to a faculty. 
Dogs have it, too, sometimes considerably devel- 
oped. Almost any dog has intelligence high 
enough to be conscious of itself — to be capable 
of making him review and judge his own acts 
in the court of his own mind. 

In boyhood I had a dog of mixed derivation, 
a greedy dog, weak as a human where his appe- 
tites urged, but ridden by a painful conscience. 
One summer day I watched him while he de- 
bated with himself concerning a beautiful, a 
very beautiful steak, that lay close to the edge 
of the kitchen table. Finally he looked around 
with the face and mean eyes of a sneak, to make 
sure he was alone. He missed me. I was 
standing still, outside. 



Spirit Life 231 

Then he made a movement toward the steak, 
his forefeet off the floor, and dropped back and 
made that queer internal modulated whine a 
dog makes when he wants something awfully 
and doesn't dare bark ; and danced a little with 
his forefeet; and then with one desperate rush 
captured the steak, broke for the open, and ran 
into me. 

Surprise shocked him to a standstill, with the 
steak in his jaws. 

He was a thief, but he was my dog. I took 
the steak away from him, and told him what I 
thought of a dog that would steal from even the 
people he owned ; and while I thus was preach- 
ing along came Mother, and — I have memories. 

I was caught with the goods, apparently on 
the edge of feeding my wretched pup, in 
flagrant violation of the ethics, of all the laws 
of domestic economy. Carlo was cringeing, 
with one side of his jaw sliding along the ground 
and on the other side a grin of propitiation, but 
Mother saw him not. 

I took the licking that should have been his. 
He took asylum under the stable, and there for 
three days he stuck, nor would come forth, nor 
eat. I couldn't scare him out. He would lie 



232 Spirit Life 

with eyes askant, just beyond reach, a figure of 
desolation, ashamed and unresponsive. 

Toward evening of the third day I ap- 
proached him with food. He crawled out on 
his stomach, looking up sidewise with misery 
in his eyes. But when he ate, at first with hesi- 
tation, then like a wolf, and found himself full 
and in no danger of bodily harm, he did a vast 
romp, and in three minutes barked the barks of 
three days, scratched earth backward with his 
hind feet, and forgot the whole tragedy. 

That dog could think. He had a mind and a 
conscience, and these are properties of a soul. 
Not all the Doctors MacDougall that ever came 
out of Scotland could make me believe dogs 
have no souls. They are not of the beasts that 
perish, if such beasts be — which I doubted even 
before I had read Sir John Lubbock, or Maet- 
terlinck on "The Bee," or Fabre's "Life of the 
Spider." 

Fortune once favored me with a smoke-room 
companion in a west bound Union Pacific train. 
He was a middle aged man who took himself 
seriously, a Professor of Psychology in a 
Pacific coast "college," and he came out strong 
on the psychology of dogs, concerning which he 
held a low opinion, backed by instances. 



Spirit Life 233 

One of these instances was a demonstration 
of stupidity by a young collie that had been 
commended because of its reputation for alert 
mentality. A spurious reputation he found it 
to be, for not even the most elementary tests 
drew more than earnest attention and futile 
efforts to understand. 

This was the simplest one: Observing or 
having been informed that dogs were fond of 
playing ball, he procured a hollow ball of India 
rubber. Holding the ball close to but clearly 
before the dog, he explained at length, in words 
of one and two syllables, that he was going to 
throw it a certain distance across certain ob- 
stacles, and desired the dog to travel around 
those obstacles on reverse curves, and retrieve it. 
This being made clear, he asked the dog: 

"Do you understand?" 

To which the dog without hesitation re- 
sponded "Woof!" which is dogese for "Yes, 
sir." 

The ball was thrown precisely as he had in- 
formed the dog it would be. But instead of 
following the curves as instructed, the stupid 
creature went over the obstacles, picked up the 
ball, brought it back, and wanted to play some 



234 Spirit Life 

more. No psychology. Nobody home between 
that witless dog's two ears. 

It would have been of no use to short-fuse the 
professor's conclusion and hand it back to blow 
him up. Of the two, the dog had the better 
psychology, operating along a straight line be- 
tween two points, totally indifferent to reverse 
curves or any other fool idea. 

Here was a mind trained up to professorial 
level testing a mind that was not trained at all. 
Which of the two came out best? If at bodily 
dissolution only one could survive, which would 
it be ? I withhold my own answer, for one was 
a prof essor— and of Psychology, no less — while 
the other was only a dog. 

THE DOG THAT COULD LIVE NO LONGER 

When a boy or a girl of fourteen years or 
under commits suicide the newspapers play up 
the story. It makes the front page easily if 
the unhappy departed belong to a family of 
large means, the kind of family whose head 
comes under the reportorial classification of 
Wealthy Clubman. In the lexicon of youth 
that fate reserves for a bright manhood there 
is supposed to be no such word as suicide. 



Spirit Life 235 

Not so with dogs. Cases are well known 
where a dog has actually reasoned out the way 
to euthanasia. Such a one brought a watery 
finish to a dog that belonged to the family of 
Tom Devereaux. 

Tom had given this dog in its puppyhood 
to Mrs. Devereaux before she became Mrs. 
Devereaux. It was her dog and nobody's 
else. Its peculiar and favorite place of rest 
was Mrs. Devereaux's lap. It grew to be 
quite a big dog, long enough to lop over at both 
ends, but this made no difference until little 
Herbert came. 

The dog was at once infatuated with the 
baby. The baby loved the dog, and the dog 
found delight in rolling with him on the floor 
and in those dear indignities which human 
babies put upon dogs. Only one thing dark- 
ened their otherwise cordial relations. The 
dog resented Herbert's usurpation of his place 
on the lap. It would try to push him off, and 
took with ill grace reproof for doing so. At 
last came an afternoon when patience at this 
monstrous favoritism broke, and the dog softly 
but with firm admonition nipped Herbert's 
hand; whereupon Mrs. Devereaux took down 



236 Spirit Life 

a theretofore merely ornamental thong, and 
gave the dog a thorough lacing. 

He took it in silence, and when it was over 
waited until someone opened the door. Then 
he bolted through, headed straight down the 
street to a pier that jutted into the lake, raced 
to the end of it, pitched off and drowned, re- 
fusing rescue. 

THE CAT THAT PERSUADED ITSELE 

A wholly different course of reasoning was 
taken by the cat Romeo, of Indianapolis. 
Romeo was so named partly because of his 
amatory record, partly because he was pop- 
ular with Romeo Johnson, a star member of 
The Indianapolis Journal staff. He lived in 
a gaudy barroom around the corner from The 
Journal office. 

First time I saw him, I had gone into that 
joint with Romeo for a purpose then common 
but now outlawed. At the far end of the bar 
lay the most dreadfully dirty cat I ever had 
seen. He seemed to have been rolled in an 
ash pile after a bath of molasses. His hair 
was kinked and spiked like a pickaninny's. 
His eyes were like cove oysters far gone. His 
tail was a thing of deep discouragement. And 



Spirit Life 237 

he was drunk. In the literal sense, beastly 
drunk. 

Romeo Johnson spilled part of his cocktail 
before him. He licked it up, and waited for 
more. No more being offered, he slithered 
off the bar, lapped at the waste beer in the 
trough below, and had to be helped back to 
his station by the bartender, who said 

"He's about ripe now. This is gonna be a 
bad day for dogs." 

I was informed it was his custom when 
properly primed to go forth in the world and 
offer combat to his natural enemies, could any 
such be found; that on his appearance every 
dog in the street would promptly reef his tail 
and beat it out of that, with all celerity. He 
was bad medicine. 

A year later being again in Indian- 
apolis, I asked Romeo about his namesake. 

"Come see him," said Romeo. 

Around the corner went we, and into that 
same place. At the end of the bar lay a large 
and glossy torn, with topaz eyes. Every hair 
of his shining coat was black. He was a 
beauty, but a haughty one — for a he. 

Leisurely he gat him up and with elegance 
walked down the bar to where we stood, gave 



238 Spirit Life 

us a stony glare, went back to where he had 
been, his tail sticking straight up in the air, 
superciliously indifferent to all things, espe- 
cially to us. 

I asked for the souse cat I had seen there 
before and had not forgotten. 

"That is he," said Romeo, ostentatiously 
grammatical. 

"Yep," said the barkeep, "that's him." 

Now developed a story showing that even 
a cat has more than merely animal senses. As 
time passed, the cat Romeo had gradually lost 
his power to eliminate alcohol. This was 
brought home to him with a shock one day 
when he was so far gone that his legs got out 
of control. He had accumulated the load of 
his life and had gone on what he still believed 
to be the war path. 

By the kerb stood a farmer's wagon from 
somewhere out Broad Ripple way, and under 
this wagon was a dog that never before had 
been off the farm, and therefore knew not 
Romeo. Against this innocent stranger Romeo 
projected himself with such force as was in 
him. The dog received him gladly with a 
stiff foreleg defense which w r ould have discon- 
certed Romeo sober, but was by far too much 



Spirit Life 239 

for Romeo stewed; and the next he knew he 
was being rolled and worried, helpless and 
outdone. He did what any cat would do in a 
case where valor failed. He started to climb 
a tree. 

But the tree he tried to climb happened to 
be a steel trolley pole. The rest is painful. He 
regained the bar room with that demon dog still 
rolling him, and was saved by a bung-starter in 
the hands of his side kick, the bartender. 

He refused the liquid consolation preferred 
by the side kick after he had placed him 
tenderly on the bar. He seemed stunned, as 
it were, for his world had caved and crashed 
in upon him. He wanted to be alone with his 
hurts and his thoughts. It was not until the 
next day that he seemed to have reached a 
conclusion on which he could safely stand: if 
that stuff put him where he could not climb a 
tree, it was no stuff for him thenceforth. And 
he never took another drink. 

Had that tomcat a mind? Could he think? 
Could he reason? Could he conquer and 
govern himself? Of course he had. Of 
course he could and did. How many men af- 
flicted with a similar appetite could so com- 
pletely and on only a first warning have done 



m 



240 Spirit Life 

the same thing, with no help other than their 
own reasoning power, no tapering off, no cure 
save from within? Set beside him a human 
sot, and of the two which would be of the 
beasts that perish, which have a soul to save 
alive? 



HYPNOTISM 

Along in the early eighteen-nineties a cheer- 
ful Chicago young man named William Ken- 
nedy started out to draw a streak of astonish- 
ment round the world, and did it. Certainly, 
he did it. 

He was a Professor by the time he reached 
Omaha — a Professor of Hypnotism. Con- 
cerning what he could not do with an hypnotic 
subject I am uninformed, but what he could 
do was a-plenty. He reached his peak at 
London. 

What he did or where he went afterward 
might be covered with Paul's favorite evasion, 
"I do not know. God knoweth." But while 
he was at the peak I saw him do many things 
that would defy explanation by any ordinary 
knowledge of human nature or natural law. 
Some of these things were grotesque in the 
extreme. Some were outrageously funny, 
some merely outrageous, some impossible — 
until you saw them. Things under this latter 

241 



242 Spirit Life 

head could be put into print, but the print 
would be denied the mails. 

By way of compliment Kennedy gave & 
private exhibition to a party of us after the 
public performance one evening, and its ex- 
treme character may be guessed when I tell 
you some of us begged him to stop it, while 
the more squeamish left the place with what 
dignity they might. 

His regular platform elucidations were 
enough to make anyone sit up. I had a party 
in a stage box one evening. In my party were 
a noble earl, a renowned American actor, an 
officer of Roy al Horse Artillery, the London 
correspondent of the New York Sun, and the 
head of a great county family. Kennedy 
played up strong for us. 

His method was to call for skeptics to come 
forward and test his power, and usually he got 
genuine responses up to a half dozen or so. 
He made no secret from me of having volun- 
teers planted in the house, but it is only fair 
to say he never called them up unless there 
were not enough others. Two of these shil- 
labers (as such are styled in the show business 
— "shills" for short) he carried with him, but 
for self evident reasons they could only be 



Spirit Life 243 

used occasionally in any long metropolitan 
run. 

THE ORTHODOX PARTY AND THE "BABY" 

That evening one of the genuine volunteers 
was a little, bearded, orthodox Jew, with 
Houndsditch writ large all over him, a mili- 
tant nonbeliever, who declared himself invinci- 
ble and was present with hostile intent. 
Within ten minutes Kennedy had him believ- 
ing he was a nursemaid. He had a gown and 
bonnet on and carried a babe in arms. The 
babe was a young pig, unruly, vocal, and slip- 
pery. The rage and humiliation of that 
orthodox little man when Kennedy snapped 
him awake, were pitiful. There he was, 
gowned like a woman and fondling an Unclean 
Thing. He tore the gown, cursed the pig bit- 
terly, emitted a torrent of Houndsditch He- 
brew, and fell into tears, and had to be led away. 
Our noble earl was moved to extreme oration. 

"My word!" said he. 

Our artillery officer was even more emo- 
tional. He observed, 

"I say, you know." 

THE EXPERT FROM THE AUDIENCE 

Kennedy stood a half dozen subjects in a 



244 Spirit Life 

row. To one of them he handed a great goblet 
filled to the brim with something viscous and 
opaque. 

"You are a judge of wine/' said he, "and I 
want your opinion of this Chateau Lafitte. 
Will you please taste it for me?" 

The subject took the goblet and sipped 
from it like a connoisseur, rolling the sip under 
his tonque and smacking his lips, a smile of 
ecstasy irradiating his face; and he was going 
to gulp the goblet empty when Kennedy took 
it from him (not too easily) and waked him 
up. Then he let him smell it. 

The man would have had an eruption then 
and there if Kennedy had not snapped him 
back and told him he would have no memory 
of it after he waked up. 

Kennedy brought the goblet across to our 
box and handed it to me. 

"Pass it around," he said. 

I did not. I handed it back in haste. The 
dainty exhilarant it contained was a mixture 
of neat's foot oil, turpentine, and asafoetida. 
I had to throw away my gloves, but even at 
that the fingers of my right hand were un- 
pleasantly reminiscent three or four days. 



Spirit Life 245 

KENNEDY AND THE GREAT PRINCE 

By royal command (a fictional locution) 
Kennedy gave a private demonstration one 
afternoon for the then Prince of Wales (after- 
ward King Edward VII). Royal command 
stuff usually is pulled at a royal residence, but 
the old Queen was quite a dragon about such 
things, and the Prince was a royal good fellow, 
democratic, without frills. He didn't mind 
coming to Kennedy, since Kennedy couldn't 
go to Marlborough House. With him was his 
secretary (Colonel Knollys) and two or three 
personal friends. It was not much of a show, 
for Kennedy felt himself restricted. The 
Prince did not believe he could be put under 
control, and went so far as to dare Kennedy 
to try it on. 

A determined man may by opposing his 
will set any hypnotiser at bay; and the Prince 
had a strong will. Kennedy tried his utmost. 
His forehead was beaded before the Prince's 
eyelids began to droop. He stretched out his 
arms and the Prince was about to fall into 
them when Colonel Knollys interposed an arm 
and said 



246 Spirit Life 

"This has gone far enough." 

It had, but the Prince gave in and compli- 
mented Kennedy, and went even to the length 
of shaking hands, a most notable thing in a 
country where hands never are shaken unless 
under unusual conditions or for extraordinary 
reasons. As Bide Dudley would say, "all 
were pleased." 

THE HYPNOTIC PROCESS 

The psychology and physiology of hypno- 
tism have their operative seat in that part of 
the brain which lies just inside the opening 
through which the spinal cord enters the skull 
and is known as the Medulla Oblongata. It 
is cone-shaped, a little more than an inch high, 
and about an inch across at the base. Above 
it lies the cerebellum, or little brain ; and above 
that the cerebrum, or great brain. The three 
divisions are connected by a bridge of nerve 
tissues. They constitute a complete organ, 
in De^Quincy's definition of an organ as a 
group of parts which act upon each other, the 
whole in turn acting upon the parts. 

The medulla is the primary brain, acting as 
a conductor of motor and sensory impressions 
from all parts of the body. 



Spirit Life 247 

The hypnotic influence begins at the front 
of the brain, just back of the eyes. Thence 
it flows to the second (the little) brain; and 
through that to the primary brain at the base 
of the skull, where it takes possession and dur- 
ing its occupancy completely controls all the 
processes and actions of the man. The man 
himself, his mind, his soul and his spirit, have 
been dispossessed. An alien reigns. 

"Hypnotism" is a word of comparatively 
modern origin. It was first employed by Doctor 
Brain, an English student of psychic phe- 
nomena. Such phenomena divide themselves 
in two classes, upon what may be termed the 
principle of causation. 

The first of these two classes includes all 
phenomena produced while the will of the 
subject is under control of an operator, a 
hypnotist. The second class includes those 
which occur independently of hypnotic control. 

The term "hypnotism" includes both classes, 
as well as the various processes by and through 
which they are produced.* 



* From this point I follow largely an article by the author of 
"The Harmonic Series."— W. D. E. 



248 Spirit Life 

The relation between hypnotist and subject 
does not involve continuing domination by the 
hypnotist or continuing passivity of the sub- 
ject. But it has been demonstrated beyond 
all doubt that a hypnotist can completely con- 
trol the will and the voluntary powers of his 
subject during continuance of the hypnotic 
relation. 

Says Doctor Luys of the Charity Hospital 
of Paris, in his Clinical Lectures: 

"You cannot only oblige this defenseless 
being (hypnotised subject), who is incapable 
of opposing the slightest resistance, to give 
from hand to hand anything you choose, but 
you can also make him sign a promise, draw 
up a bill of exchange, or any kind of agree- 
ment. You can make him write an holo- 
graphic will, which he will hand over to you, 
and of which he will never know the existence. 
He is ready to fulfill the minutest legal formal- 
ities, and will do so with a calm, serene and 
natural manner which would deceive the most 
expert law officers. He will not hesitate 
either, you may be sure, to make a denuncia- 
tion, or bear false witness. He is the passive 
instrument of your will." 



Spirit Life 249 

Professor De Lawrence says in his work on 
hypnotism: 

"There is a way in which a shrewd hypnotist 
can succeed in putting people under the in- 
fluence who really do not care to be hypnotized. 

"The author has, during his years of ex- 
perience, discovered and sucessfully used a 
method by which he has suceeded in hypnotiz- 
ing a great many people against their will, who 
never had been operated on before. 

"You can then proceed by a few well chosen 
suggestions to put a man dead asleep and in- 
duce somnambulism or trance in the regular 
way. He will ever afterward be your subject 
if you understand your business in giving post- 
hypnotic suggestions." 

One of the manifestations which usually fol- 
low the inception of the hypnotic process is the 
inability of the subject to control the objective 
and perceptive faculties of his mind. His 
physical sensory organism becomes confused 
in its reports of the outside world. He begins 
to receive mixed and imperfect impressions. 

As the condition is intensified those con- 
volutions of the brain which lie immediately 
above and back of the eyes pass into a state 
of complete anaesthesia, or temporary par- 



250 " Spirit Life 

alysis. The voluntary perception of the phys- 
ical world is destroyed. Consciousness is 
driven back from the objective, rational plane. 
The will of the operator comes into partial 
control of the channels through which the con- 
sciousness of the subject is reached upon the 
spiritual plane. 

Dr. John Duncan Quackenboss, Professor 
Emeritus, Columbia University, says in his 
work on "Hypnotism in Mental and Moral 
Culture" that "It has long been known that a 
human being can be thrown into an artificial 
sleep, during which he sustains such a relation 
to an operator who has induced it that he is 
sensitive only to what the operator tells him he 
is sensitive to, and is wholly subject, so far as 
his mental operations and physical actions are 
concerned, to the volition of his hypnotist, A 
hypnotized person sees, hears, tastes, smells 
and feels what the operator says that he sees, 
hears, tastes, smells and feels — and nothing 
else. 

"A simple illustration will prove this. Let 
the subject's ears be completely muffled in 
such manner as to shut out the sound of the 
operator's voice. Then let the operator throw 
him into hypnosis. It will be found that he 



Spirit Life 251 

will hear just the same, and will obtain exactly 
the same impression, as before his ears were 
muffled. 

"Or instead of muffling the subject's ears, let 
a dozen or more of the spectators present create 
all the noise and confusion possible. Let them 
carry this so far that no one in the room can 
hear a word the operator says. With all this 
noise going on, repeat the experiment. It will 
be found that exactly the same results will ob- 
tain. The noise which otherwise would drown 
the operator's voice will have no effect upon the 
subject. He will seemingly hear every word 
the operator says — and nothing else." 

An impulse of a human soul formulated into 
a definite thought becomes a force. This 
force may be impressed upon the conscious- 
ness of another soul without the aid of words 
either spoken, written or printed, without any 
use whatever of the physical sensory organs. 
It may be accomplished through spiritual 
agencies exclusively, and the channels through 
which this may be accomplished are the spirit- 
ual sensory organs, which are analogous to the 
physical sensory organs in number and char- 
acter, except that they operate upon a higher 
plane of vibratory activity. 



252 Spirit Life 

That is precisely what occurs in the stage 
of hypnosis above described. The physical 
sensory organism is for the time being com- 
pletely paralyzed. It conveys no impressions 
to the imprisoned consciousness of the subject. 
In this condition all the channels of ingress to 
the subject's consciousness are under control 
of the operator, who for the time being is an 
absolute censor, possessing unlimited authority 
and power. The subject sees nothing, hears 
nothing, feels nothing; is, in fact, conscious of 
nothing save the dominating presence and 
power of his hypnotist's will. 

This contravenes the theory that a subject 
cannot by hypnotic process be impelled to 
commit a crime. A Michigan court a few 
years ago admitted evidence of hypnotic influ- 
ence in a trial for murder, and a verdict was 
returned not against the man who did the 
physical act of murder, but against the man 
who hypnotized and then directed him to do it. 
This was an extreme instance, but the average 
experiment will carry far enough to prove the 
open possibility of criminal hypnotic practice. 
I have seen Kennedy, Carpenter and others 
experimentally demonstrate it: 



Spirit Life 253 

The subject is first hypnotized. He is then 
strongly impressed with the suggestion that a 
certain person there present has deeply 
wronged him and deserves to be killed. He 
is given a knife and commanded to kill that 
person. He proceeds to carry out the com- 
mand. He even carries it to the point of 
stealthily approaching the victim and raising 
the knife over him — but he will not strike. 

Why does he stop at this critical point? 

Because he is impelled by the real motive 
and intention in the mind of his hypnotist, not 
by the spoken word of command. In this 
condition and relation words mean nothing to 
him unless they convey the real intent of the 
mind that projects them. In fact the subject 
does not hear the words of command at all. 
He receives only the conscious intent of his 
hypnotist, who cannot project upon his sub- 
ject the impulse of murder unless there is in 
the background of his own mind the criminal 
impulse which inspires murder. 

Man depends upon his physical senses to 
inform him of his immediate physical environ- 
ment. He is not yet fully aware that he has 
a spiritual organism, for it seldom has been 



254 Spirit Life 

called into action in such manner as to identify 
it as something apart from his physical being. 
But though the physical sensory organism 
yields to the paraylzing effects of the hypnotic 
process, the spiritual continues its activity 
through even the final stages of hypnosis. In 
this independence, the spiritual organism takes 
temporarily the place of the physical in its 
relation to the subject's consciousness, becom- 
ing the only channel by which he receives im- 
pressions from without. Therefore whatever 
he receives through this channel has verity to 
him. Every thought of the operator, every 
impulse of his will, makes an impression upon 
the subject's consciousness as definite as the 
tangible objects of nature in his waking state. 
They constitute the only world with which 
for the time he is in touch. It is not strange 
but perfectly natural that "he sees, hears, 
tastes, smells and feels what the operator says 
that he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels — 
and nothing else. . . , For the time being his 
individuality is surrendered to the person who 
has hypnotized him." 

The final stage of hypnosis involves the 
complete suspension of physical animation. 



Spirit Life 255 

In this state every function of the physical or- 
ganism is wholly arrested. Respiration ceases, 
circulation stops. The body, in some in- 
stances, becomes cold and rigid, has every out- 
ward appearance of physical death. In its 
physiological aspect, complete functional sus- 
pension has actually occurred. 

In its downward sweep through the central 
nervous organism the hypnotic process has 
overwhelmed the primary brain and the in- 
voluntary or reflex centers of nervous energy. 
In this condition the body is no longer an active 
part of the individual. But as the physical 
organism is silenced and gradually paralyzed, 
the impulses which reach his consciousness 
through the spiritual sensory organism become 
more and more distinct. There is nothing to 
divert his attention from the impressions which 
reach him through that organism alone. The 
hypnotist commands his undivided attention. 
Hence it is that in exact proportion as this 
state of hypnosis is attained, the consciousness 
of the subject responds to the will of the 
operator. This explains why the hypnotist, 
by a simple command or impulse of the will, 
can awaken his subject. 



256 Spirit Life 

Reverting to the definition of hypnotism, it 
will be observed that it involves elements and 
conditions which are strangely analogous to 
those involved in the crime of burglary. That 
is to say: 

1. There must be at least two parties to 
the transaction. 

2. One of these must (as it were) enter 
the temple of the other. 

3. The one so entering must take unlaw- 
ful possession of that which of right belongs 
to the other. 

The analogy between these two processes 
might be carried much farther, but it is only 
intended here to suggest the fundamental fact 
that they both involve the commission of a 
wrong by one person against another. Both 
therefore involve a violation of law, for whicli 
offense there are corresponding penalties. 

The individual who throws himself into the 
artificial sleep invites thereby many results 
and conditions of which he is generally igno- 
rant. Among others, he makes it easily possi- 
ble for any one of these results to obtain : 

1. He may, unless interfered with, thus 
withdraw his consciousness from the objective 



Spirit Life 257 

plane of physical nature and in a perfectly 
conscious manner — through the medium of his 
spiritual sensory organs — see and hear oc- 
currences upon the spiritual plane within the 
range of spiritual vision, hearing and observa- 
tion. His waking memory of all he has thus 
observed and experienced will be commen- 
surate with the extent to which his conscious- 
ness still occupies and continues to register 
through the third physical brain. If the ob- 
jective faculties alone are asleep upon the 
physical plane, all that part of the third brain 
lying back of and above the organs of percep- 
tion is awake and active, and the waking mem- 
ory will be clear and distinct. 

2. But he may go still farther and with- 
draw all consciousness from even the third 
physical brain. In this case he brings back 
to his waking consciousness no remembrance 
of what he may have seen, heard or observed 
through the medium of his spiritual sensory 
organs. 

3. In either condition the door is wide 
open to the hypnotist (from either plane of 
life) v r ho may chance to pass that way. If it 
be a physically embodied hypnotist, he may 
enter the domain of the sleeper's soul and take 



258 Spirit Life 

undisputed possession and control without the 
least resistance or opposition. The sleeper 
becomes a hypnotic subject and can be made 
to produce such phenomena as the operator 
would be able to "suggest" or command if he 
had obtained his control in the ordinary way. 

4. There are physically disembodied hyp- 
notists as well as those yet in the physical body. 
Those physically disembodied intelligences 
commonly known as "spirits" represent all 
kinds and classes of individuals. The lower 
the type, the more closely they approach the 
purely physical plane. 

The ignorant and the vicious upon the spir- 
itual side of life generally seek to attach them- 
selves to earth conditions as closely as possible. 
There are perfectly natural reasons for this 
desire, as well as for the efforts they put forth 
to accomplish its realization. 

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XV, has 
this: 

"Certain persons are more readily hypno- 
tized than others, and it has been observed that 
once the condition has been successfully in- 
duced, it can be more easily induced a second 
time, a third time more easily than a second, 
and so on until the patient may be so pliant to 



Spirit Life 259 

the will of the operator that a fixed look, or a 
wave of the hand, may throw him at once into 
the hypnotic condition/' 

Science has followed the hypnotist and his 
subject into that realm of spiritual life which 
has been designated "the unknowable." It 
has there gathered many additional facts of 
nature which it is able to definitely formulate. 
Among those additional facts which have a 
specific bearing upon the subject are: 

1. Hypnotism, in its essential nature, is a 
subjective psychic process. 

2. Its most direct and essential results are 
related to and registered upon the soul, rather 
than upon the physical body. 

3. As might readily be anticipated, there- 
fore, physical death does not necessarily break, 
destroy, counteract nor even mitigate the hyp- 
notic relation when that relation has been fully 
entered into and established upon the physical 
plane. 

A suggestive hint of this underlying fact 
may be obtained from an experiment which is 
already familiar to both hypnotists and stu- 
dents. 

For instance, it is a well-known fact that a 
"suggestion" or command given to a subject 



260 Spirit Life 

while he is in a state of profound hypnosis, to 
be executed or performed at some future time, 
will be obeyed with absolute fidelity at the time 
and place and in the exact manner prescribed. 
Professor De Lawrence says : 

"Suggest to a subject that in ninety days 
from a given date he will come to your house 
with his coat on inside out, and he will most 
certainly do so." 

Thus it has come to be known that the hyp- 
notic relation, once established^ continues in- 
definitely. Not only this, it continues even 
though the hypnotist may have entirely for- 
gotten both the subject and the incident in the 
meantime. It continues though the subject 
be wholly unconscious of the fact. It con- 
tinues regardless of the will, wish, memory or 
knowledge of either party, or of both. It 
continues though the parties be separated as 
far as the opposite poles of the earth. It con- 
tinues without regard to time, place, distance 
or physical environment. It continues, in fact, 
unbroken and unabated until both shall come 
to recognize the law they thus have violated, 
and shall of their own volition unite in an 
effort to restore themselves to a normal rela- 
tion. Even then it often becomes a labor of 



Spirit Life 261 

years for both to return to the condition of 
independence. 

With these facts in mind, those who know 
that there is a life beyond the grave will readily 
understand and appreciate the horrible truth 
than even physical death is of itself no barrier 
to the operation of hypnotic power once the 
hypnotic relation has been fully entered into. 

For this is but another demonstration of the 
continuity of natural law. Every law of in- 
dividual life upon the physical plane has its 
correlation upon the spiritual planes of being. 
They are but the same laws running through 
all the varied phases and conditions of nature. 

As a natural sequence, it has been found 
that in every instance where the hypnotist sur- 
vives his subject upon the physical plane, the 
disembodied subject remains bound by the 
same inexorable law that bound him upon 
earth. He is so bound notwithstanding the 
physically embodied hypnotist may be entirely 
ignorant of the fact and quite unconscious of 
the bond. This strange bondage continues 
throughout the lifetime of the hypnotist, and 
during this term, however long or short it 
may be, the subject is known upon the spiritual 
planes of life as an "earth-bound" soul. 



THE LITTLE GOLDEN SNAKES 

In this year of nineteen-twenty the billboards 
suffered a chromatic eruption having to do with 
the name of Thurston. This Thurston is a 
wizard, a prestidigitateur, an expert in those 
amazing and amusing matters where the Hand 
is Quicker than the Eye. That is to say, rela- 
tively an expert. The great expert to whose 
place and popularity he aspires was a plain, a 
simple man, who hid an ingenuous mind behind 
a Mephistophelean face — Herman the Great. 
Herman the Great was a wonder. 

Once when he had penetrated as far as Con- 
stantinople in the course of a tour intended to 
arouse superstitious curiosity in the minds of 
Europe's (then) crowned heads, he was com- 
manded to accompany the Sultan on the royal 
yacht down (or up) the Bosphorus, a pleasant 
trip on a summer afternoon. 

The Sultan was a dour, solemn creature, 
Abdul Azziz of foetid memory. Abdul be- 
lieved in sorcery and was not above cultivating 
experts therein, with a view to possible em- 
ployment in his own little underhand affairs; 

262 



Spirit Life 263 

and Herman had the Arabian wizards flopping 
and gasping on the grass, thereby commending 
himself as a desirable possibility in palace man- 
agement. On this trip he had the Sultan's 
suite invoking whatever powers that sort of 
people would naturally look to, but Abdul him- 
self was not very deeply interested until Her- 
man borrowed his watch, threw it overboard, 
followed with a fishhook at the end of a line, 
promptly hauled in a protesting fish, cut the 
fish open, took from its entrails the Sultan's 
watch, handed it over to the chief eunuch or 
secretary of the treasury or something, made 
his best stage bow, and retired aft. 

Next day he staid in his hotel, awaiting 
largess. About the noon hour a messenger 
from the palace was announced. Herman 
ordered his admission and began to speculate 
whether the bag would be full of diamonds or 
rubies. The messenger came in, accompanied 
by two soldiers, and handed him a written order 
to depart out of Constantinople that same day, 
or suffer the consequences, which in that capi- 
tal and those days would probably have taken 
the form of boiling oil. He departed, escorted 
by the soldiers. However: 

Herman was playing a summer engagement 



264 Spirit Life 

at McVieker's theatre the day he came upon 
Mr. McVicker and myself while we were talk- 
ing about some weird things that had happened 
through the apparently unconscious agency of 
the same Mrs. Simpson heretofore mentioned 
in these pages. He was interested at once, and 
also at once made proclamation that all such 
performances were "hanky-pank," and that he 
could duplicate any of them. We took him up 
at that, and sent him over to Mrs. Simpson. 
In an hour or so he came back, somewhat 
shaken and considerably wrought up. 

Mrs. Simpson's consulting room was what 
is or was known as a hall room at the back of 
the house. It had only one door and one 
window, and the window gave upon a back 
yard with grass on it and a narrow board walk 
leading to a gate in a high board fence on an 
alleyway. The floor of the room was bare. 
There was a plain wooden table, on each side of 
which stood a Windsor chair. Herman took one 
of these, Mrs. Simpson the other. 

It was a warm afternoon, but clear, and 
Herman was trying to make conversation, 
when of a sudden there was a whirl of wind in 
the back yard, wind filled with a fine glitter like 
gold dust in the sunlight; and this gold dust 



Spirit Life 265 

swirled in through the window and then swirled 
out again, leaving the table covered with little 
golden snakes, an inch or two long, dozens and 
dozens of them, all alive and all wriggling in 
a most intricate manner. Though Herman 
was startled almost out of his seat, he came 
back in a flash and grabbed at them, but caught 
nothing — for there was nothing to be caught. 
The little gold snakes had vanished into air. 
The table, the room, Mrs. Simpson and the 
soft summer afternoon, were as they had been; 
and that was all. 

"Best trick I've ever seen," said he, telling 
us about it. "I must find out how she did it. 
I could use it." 

Next time I saw her, I asked Mrs. Simpson 
for an explanation. 

"There isn't any," said she. "It just hap- 
pened so." 



THE SUM OF THE MATTER 

Legitimately admissible evidence shows cer- 
tain powers of excarnate intelligence as active 
in the world. Physical science has advanced 
its method so far beyond the old horizon that 
an inference of continuous individual life is not 
to be avoided. 

The province thus doubly indicated has been 
known to a few in all ages. The mind of our 
western world is uneasily curious about it, and 
that unease is symptomatic of a change in our 
whole body of spiritual and ethical ideology; 
but we do not yet see anything that adds to or 
takes away from the message of Jesus, given 
though it was to a world that has clouded it with 
many puerile interpretations. 

That message, like all that ever were deliv- 
ered by the High Ones, has at its heart a 
steadfast assurance of the continuity of in- 
dividual existence, and on this we may rest. 
It discloses death as an incident in life, in- 
voluntary as birth, and quite as necessary. In 

266 



Spirit Life 267 

other words, life before birth as well as after 
death — the doctrine of repeated bodily lives, 
of which we hear too much that is too vague, 

I am not sure any attempt to extend 
knowledge in that direction is important, since 
the knowledge itself will come when it will 
come, and would mean little until then. But 
the wisdom of one age is the joke of another. 
Since the frustration of those finalities which 
prevailed before the advent of Galileo, science 
has found new lights, tending to show human- 
ity as included in that scheme of perpetuity 
which lies at the base of existence in the lower 
strata, and gives us the only definition of the 
universe that responds at all to reason. 

Newton saw an apple fall, and found the 
law of gravitation. That incident made pos- 
sible a knowledge of the trajectory of our sun, 
and now we know the course and at least a 
part of the story of the world we inhabit. 

A billionth rate world it is, revolving around 
a millionth rate sun, that in turn travels a long 
ellipse within one end of which blazes another 
sun, known to us as the star Aldaberan. At 
the other end are cold voids, spacy vasts of 
absolute zero. Outside it swims the star 
Polaris. 



268 Spirit Life 

Astronomical history is old enough in 
authentic records to show that somewhat more 
than two thousand years ago Aldaberan was 
visible only as a luminous speck. Now it 
blazes in the evening sky, a beacon among the 
glittering points of fire that strew the firma- 
ment this side the milky way. 

The rate of travel of our sun through space, 
with its little group of satellites, has been de- 
termined. Southward through the heavens 
we race, five hundred million miles a year, 
along an arc whose segment shows undeviating 
progresss in the one direction of that growing 
point of light, and whose projection in unmis- 
takable nodes will carry us close around it, 
and then away, along a wide and awful sweep, 
toward Polaris, to the extreme curve that 
must be passed before the journey back again 
begins. 

How many times the sun and this our planet 
have swung that course, only the power that 
hangeth the worlds upon nothing ever can 
know. That we are now more than half way 
down the journey and entering on a spring- 
like opening to a young summer of celestial 
weather, is clear to those whose study is the 
sky. 



Spirit Life 269 

The mathematics has shown by comparison 
of the gravitational power of all the greater 
stars in our region of the universe that the 
line we are following is shaped by the influ- 
ence of Aldaberan, and that its direction will 
carry us around that star in somewhat more 
than twenty-five thousand years. The turn 
will bring us so near to it, and into a zone of 
heat so high, that physical life in its present 
form will be impossible ; for the sun Aldaberan 
is incandescent. The shadowy old belief that 
the world shall die in fire, enwrapped a truth 
— as most old beliefs are found to do when 
they are understood. 

At the other end of the oval are thrilling 
regions of thick-ribbed ice. Flung to the ex- 
treme limit of its course before it turns ir 
answer to its other magnet, our and the other 
worlds that circle with it will dim and fall into 
a sleep of cold so deep that life again will be 
suspended, to again awaken and again begin 
a new development as the southward turn is 
made and warmth flows in once more. 

The story of the earth takes a fresh mean- 
ing in the light of these readings of the heavens. 
The glacial periods, the wavering poles, the 
change in land and water surfaces, begin to 



270 Spirit Life 

clear themselves up. Two thousand years 
take our solar system but a very little way on 
its long travel between its gravitational seats. 
Almost 150,000 years are required for the 
circuit; yet the last two thousand years have 
shown a steadily increasing warmth. In the 
time of Csesar the rivers of Italy were thickly 
frozen in the winter, and the north of Europe 
was a sullen forest, whose scant barbarian 
tribes clothed themselves in the skins of wild 
animals. Egypt and India were lands of 
sunshine, whose peoples had inherited from 
millennia beyond much of the knowledge we 
are rediscovering now. The knowledge that 
enabled the builders of the pyramid of Ghizeh 
to make an orientation sixteen lines nearer the 
true than Tycho Brahe could define four hun- 
dred years ago, was not held by men who 
viewed with naked and unaided eyes the stars 
above the bare sands of their Lybian desert. 
High knowledge alone could have enabled 
them to place that pile in the exact center of 
the earth's land and water distribution. They 
were the heirs of an earlier summer of science, 
that gradually ebbed away as the sun rolled 
forward into fuller geniality, and spread more 
fruitful life toward the north. 



Spirit Life 271 

Time after time the world has spun that 
far-flung oval, and life has risen and flourished 
in the rising heat, to fail in fiery floods. Time 
after time has the world returned to days of 
Arcady and golden ages, to sweep away again 
into the stellar north so far that the grip of icy 
death was fast upon it. 

And in the many thousand-years of spring- 
time that led to each of these sidereal summers, 
the other many thousand-years of autumn that 
closed in unimaginable sidereal winters, how 
many races of men have risen, and striven, and 
been perfected, and passed away, each to it- 
self the sum of all that ever was or could be? 
How many more will walk the earth, and live, 
and love, and strive, and pass into the oblivious 
void, before the earth itself shall cease to be? 

Races and nations innumerable, busy with 
their gods and governments, have possessed it 
before and since the last long winter, as we 
possess it now. Names have filled it, worship 
and sacrifice have been given to deities, all as 
real as the names and races and the gods we 
know, and have slipped into the shoreless 
ocean of forgotten ages, as we shall do; and 
so it shall be through all the unguessable seons 
that Aldaberan and his groups, our own among 



272 Spirit Life 

them, will roll on their appointed way around 
another sun to which Aldaberan is as ours to 
him — for ever, and for ever. The ineffable 
stars are unaware of us. 

Tangibility is nature's transitory phase, ap- 
pearing and dissolving in processes that are 
slow only in terms of our exterior consciousness. 
Only the unseen is immortal. Sense, dimly 
manifested in our outward contact, indicates 
the one enduring quantity. Man passes, but 
the spirit of man is not to die. 

Rank after rank, the souls of men sweep 
with the swinging sun toward its turning point, 
growing with each return to bodily integu- 
ments, becoming finer and clearer as every 
season passes toward the Aldaberanian sol- 
stice, till the earth is cleared for yet another 
cycle, and those who have used it will need it 
no more, but will depart to other kingdoms of 
life, where dwell such beings as those the elder 
peoples dreamed of and called angels. We 
shall live then in houses not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens. The worlds shall fall 
away. 





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